The Storytellers
by Lady Kate and Lady Adrienne
Summary: Swan Lake, redone. Meet Lucius Drake: a blackhearted mage, Aidan Lysander: a tormented werewolf, Odile von Rothbart: a lonely princess, and Odette von Rothbart: her fiery twin. 'Cast' includes Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and other familiar faces...
1. Prologue: Memento Mori

Prologue:

Memento Mori

* * *

_**It was only the very most foolish of people that dared to ignore the warnings that surrounded the darkest reaches of the Outer Rim's northernmost corner.**_

_Everyone knew the legends—ghost stories, they were called, and perhaps rightly so—but everyone knew about them, and everyone abided by them._

_But…_

_Life wasn't worth much, if people didn't make mistakes, even the most horrible mistakes, from time to time. When no one forgot the warnings and no one thought himself about the rules…_

_Well, things just weren't very interesting **at all**…_

* * *

_The run from the Mid-Rim base to the Outer Rim and back had been difficult, to say the least. The merchant vessel **Arrcadia **had encountered numerous obstacles during the course of its journey—more so than ever before, the captain and crew had long-since realized. _

_The military check-points had been abnormally suspicious and edgy: nigh on attacking anyone who passed by with vicious interrogations. This was owed to the fact that there had been more than a scant few points of recent political friction between the Empire's various planets and sectors. Peace was becoming a novelty now. _

_There was no war—not yet, at any rate—but there was no peace. _

_Also beleaguering the weary captain and his crew were the various personal grudges and contentions between the merchants themselves, their suppliers, and those who received the shipments. Then the **Arrcadia** had been caught within the rough edge of a meteor storm, and two of its ionic combustion retainers had ruptured, causing a ship-wide radioactive contamination scare._

_Captain M'Tevv and his crew were ready to return home. _

_

* * *

_

_The vessel's auto-pilot had been switched on for the night by the captain, who had fulfilled his duties and left the helm in the capable hands of the first-officer and the ship's computer itself. And thus it was that the hour of midnight found Jarath M'Tevv—a compact and muscular man of medium height, with weathered skin and shrewd dark eyes that saw everything and missed nothing—striding down the ship's narrow main corridor, heading towards his personal quarters with the intention of turning in for the night. _

_It had been a long day, but it was over, at long last. _

_Soon he would report in to his superiors, receive his pay, and be permitted to return to his home and wife. It was a time-consuming and many-a-time difficult job…an occupation that caused him to wonder, sometimes, why he wasted his time with it at all. There were so many things that men were forced to do in the shipping business—ugly, brutal, and unscrupulous things that niggled in the back of one's memory and haunted one's vision of the future. It was not a savory occupation, sometimes, by any means_

_Yet evil and corruption did not cause the universe to cease moving_

**_A wonder, indeed…_**

_The captain passed by a window as he strode down the ship's coldly metallic, echoing corridor, and absently noticed an icily flawless jewel of a planet—clouds of vibrant sapphire and emerald swirling over its surface—hanging within the sky. 'How very stunning', he thought to himself, and continued on_

_Then he slammed himself to a halt. _

_There wasn't supposed to be any planet where they were!_

_M'Tevv froze where he was and stared out the thick plexiglass window, his dark eyes riveted to the ghostly pale glow of the globe. Though he had never given any credence to them, he **had** heard the tales—the hushed talk of half-intrigued and half-fearful souls—of a phantom planet, a sphere that appeared and then vanished at random, haunting the outer corners of the galaxy. No one ever knew where it would be seen, yet everyone knew that it existed. _

_It was the wraith-world, he had heard the people whisper. A ghost-planet, where a sinister force waited to drag its unsuspecting victims down to a terrible fate._

**_No…!_**

"_It—can't—possibly—be—!" M'Tevv managed to gasp, through lips that could scarcely form the breathless words as he quavered in unspeakable, incomprehensible, and unexplainable fear. It couldn't possibly be…it was **impossible**…!_

_All the same, he found himself suddenly wheeling and tearing back to the bridge, running as if all the darkest and vilest creatures of the abyss were behind him, snapping at his heels. When he reached his command seat, he found that the rest of his crew was in a similar state of petrified terror. Every man was pale as moonlight, a nameless fear burning in their hollow gaze. M'Tevv turned to his second-in-command._

"_There was…no planet here!" he finally stammered. "We were to cross the path of no such place on our course—tell me this is true!"_

_The other man motioned listlessly to the star charts._

"_No…we were not…" he replied._

"_Yet…here we are…and there it is…" breathed M'Tevv. They had been warned not to cross this place in the galaxy: the fearsome, unknown black reaches of the northern corner of the Outer Rim. They had been warned—but no one had listened. _

**_No…_**

_All eyes turned back to the waiting orb: it seemed to pulse with its ghastly pale light for a moment, and a peculiar tremor seemed to emanate from it, causing a low hum to resound within the bowls to the ship. The metal floor trembled beneath their booted feet. Only one crewmember dared to speak the words…_

"_What…**is** it?"_

_But they all knew—they knew, before the second officer had whispered the chilling syllables of its terrible name._

…**_For everyone knows death, when they have beheld it… _**

"_Necropolis."_

**_It is Necropolis, the World of the Dead._**

_Suddenly the ship gave a violent tremor; steel beams groaned and sparks flew, showering into the air like hissing fallen stars. The floor lurched as the sound of metal rending and scraping against itself assaulted the ears of every man. Captain M'Tevv nearly fell, and grabbed onto the nearest wall for support. The lights in the ceiling began to flicker: the ship itself was moaning in agony! _

_Then the alarms began to blare throughout the vessel, red lights flashing and sirens wailing. A collective cry went up throughout the ship as every man aboard realized his horrible danger—and then the lights went out, plunging everything into complete blackness. Suffocating darkness enshrouded them, the shuddering and convulsing of the floor ceased, but now there was a new sound…_

_Hissing, crackling._

_M'Tevv pulled himself up from the floor, where he had finally collapsed, unable to keep his footing. Along with his crew, he stood unsteadily—and looked out of the main viewport, bound to the vision of the ghost-planet._

**_Necropolis._**

_The world of the dead…_

"**_You have found Death…"_**

_The words were breathed from the core of the darkness itself, M'Tevv was certain; his mind held no hallucination, no phantasm. _

**_It was real…_**

_The air that they breathed had turned cold. He could see the breath leaving his lungs in the little smoke-like puffs that left the mouths of his crew. The planet's eerie light glinted in the eyes of the men, making them seem like unearthly denizens of the grave. Hopeless. Doomed. Dead. _

_He looked down—the hissing and crackling sound that he had heard before—it had now grown louder, and when he moved his booted foot, it came away from the floor with a snapping sound. He put his hand out to the wall, to brace himself as he nearly lost his balance once more, at the same time that the second officer looked to the glass at the window nearby. _

**_Ice._**

_Like a rapacious vine, it had covered the entire floor—coating every metallic surface in a veneer of shimmering white-blue—and now it was growing up the windows, fogging the clear glass and obscuring their sight of everything._

_The alarms continued to sound. No one of them had set them off._

_M'Tevv felt his heart begin to race—faster—faster—faster within his chest; suddenly, he could not think, he could not move. He could only feel. _

_And what he felt…was terror._

_The ice spread, shooting its razor-sharp, dagger-like fingers into the rest of the ship, covering everything, and the **Arrcadia** groaned, like a gargantuan beast in its death-throes. _

_All at once, M'Tevv could only think of one thing: escape. He wheeled around, making a mad dash for the door of the bridge, shrieking for everyone to flee—_

_Cold white-blue lightning flashed, nearly blinding him—he skidded on the ice as he began to fall towards the door—_

_The darkness loomed before him, reaching for him with its frigid grasping talons—it was here for **him**—_

_Eyes—colder than the ice, more sinister and unforgiving and evil than the darkness—appeared before him. They were hollow, inhuman eyes, unearthly white-blue and glowing, flashing in the blackness._

_And now they came towards him, the lightning crackling, as their owner—a huge, bat-winged black form—moved over the floor—_

_Then?_

**_Nothing. _**

_**

* * *

**_

_**Memento Mori.**_

_Remember, foolish mortals…_

_**Remember **_

**_that_** **_you must die._**

* * *

**_Introducing Part IV of the Travelers of Enchantment series,_**

**_a Conjunctive Effort on the parts of _**

**_Lady Kate _**

**_(also known as Kates)_**

**_and _**

**_Lady Adrienne_**

**_(also known as the Dunadan)_**

****

**_We give you_**

**_The Storytellers._**

****

**_Two sisters. A mage. A werewolf. _**

**_Magic. Plots. Curses. Intrigue. Adventure. _**

**_True love._**

****

**_Join us as the tale is spun, step into our world..._**

**_And IMAGINE._**

****

**_Once upon a time..._**

****


	2. Preemptive Equivocation

_**Chapter One:**_

_**Preemptive Equivocation**_

* * *

"_The alliance is crucial to our realm," the Chancellor had said, looking down with the coldly calculating, steely grey eyes of an aristocrat to the ramrod-straight, severely uniformed figure who stood before him, a few steps lower on the grand throne dais. "You will go to close the negotiations, Consulate, and then you will escort the princess here—to her wedding."_

_The hazel eyes of the other man—the consulate—hadn't so much flickered; the straight, thin line of his lips had no altered from its grim frown. A curt nod was his only acknowledgement of the chancellor's words, and then—_

"_It will be done, your grace."_

_Satisfied, the ruler gave a dismissive wave of his hand: the deep garnet gem on his signet ring catching the sunlight and flashing bright blood-red._

"_Then go, Consulate Lysander."_

* * *

That had been before. 

Now, it was later—afterwards—the future of that time, currently the actual present time. The event had gone by in a dizzying blur of politics, careful manipulation, and leverage—wit and cautious plotting and deft maneuvering. And now he was on the journey back to his home-world of Tyrellia: the sleek and stunning, proudly caste-oriented and entirely imperialistic jewel of the Inner Rim—with a princess-bride in tow.

Quite literally.

But…thinking of _that_ not-so-little and not-so-minor issue was just begging his migraine to return in doubly vengeful force.

And so he turned his thoughts elsewhere.

* * *

His name was Aidan Lysander, and he was the chief advisor, aide-de-camp, and clandestine bodyguard and assassin of High Chancellor Armad Valdorian, ruler of Tyrellia. Tall and flawlessly fit, having just begun to reach the prime of his life, he was one of the court's most respected, privileged, and imposing figures. 

For multiple reasons.

No one could really say that they knew what he was, how old he was, where he had come from, or how he had gotten to his current and incredibly favorable position at court. No one had ever asked.

Everyone assumed that he was human, like them, because he had the form of a human—he had two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes, one mouth and nose, and all the other distinguishing bodily characteristics of a human, or at least a humanoid. Outwardly, he was unquestionably human.

Everyone assumed that he was somewhere around his thirty-first year of life, because he looked as if he could be of that age.

No one really cared what planet he was from—again, they had all assumed that he was from Tyrellia, like them. He had the accent and mannerisms of a Tyrellian. He said all the right words; did all the right things. No one asked, because they assumed that all of their assumptions about him were true. Their determinations couldn't possibly be _false_—_that_ was simply unthinkable.

But no one really knew the real truth, because no one had ever asked him about it, and everyone really _did_ wonder about him, from time to time.

.As it was, though, Aidan Lysander was the Chancellor's most trusted official, and when it had been decided that the royal house of Valdorian would make an alliance with the powerful and fabulously wealthy house of the Baron von Rothbart...well, there had been no other option in the Chancellor's mind. There was simply no man better suited and more apt to carry out the immensely important task of escorting the prince's bride to her new home than Consulate Lysander.

For his own part, Aidan didn't like the idea of selling off a woman in order to make a political alliance—

And the woman in question, the Princess Odette Annasophia Honorine Gisella Andressa von Rothbart, was little more than a girl.

She was a very young woman, at best.

He hadn't spoken a word to the princess upon his arrival to Rook's Cliff, the ancestral von Rothbart bastion—he had seen her, once, and from a long ways off at that. But he knew, with acute and regretful clarity, that she was _very_ young. She was just nineteen years of age, the baron had told him in a carelessly offhand manner—as if it didn't matter to him in the slightest that his own daughter's life was now, in essence, the property of a man whom she had never met.

Bartering things—especially living things, and especially women—disgusted Aidan Lysander. Every atom in every fiber of his being revolted against the practice. It was insensitive, uncaring, archaic, and barbaric.

But, because he was the chancellor's right-hand man…

He had no choice.

* * *

Now they were on the return trip, and it was too late for unsettling thoughts and second-guessing. He was the consulate, and his duty was to obey the chancellor and all of his commands; his function at court was not to have his own opinions. 

It simply wasn't done.

The _Hyperion Ascendant_ was a fine ship—one of the finest vessels in the galaxy, perhaps, let alone the system—and journeys of this nature were never difficult.

—provided, of course, that intergalactic traffic didn't foul up. Even with the Senate's most recent amendments to the merchant lines and the commuting routes, interplanetary traveling could be messy. This usually didn't cause any problems for the head consulate of Tyrellia, however. A flash of credentials and a word or two was all that it took for Aidan to ensure that the _Hyperion Ascendant_ would not be delayed in any manner—because he _was_ the Consulate of Tyrellia. After all…_no one_ said no to the Consulate.

And today—

_Well, today…_ he reflected, with a tiny bit of a scowl etching into his thinned lips, as he shifted his gloved hands' grip on his wrists.

Today was important

Without warning—yet without the slightest trace of abruptness—he turned to the side, glancing with calm hazel eyes to the ship's chief helmsman.

"Our course?" he inquired, evenly.

The man glanced up from the controls, and gave a brief nod in acknowledgment of the consulate's inquiry.

"We are on course, and will arrive as scheduled, Consulate."

A brief nod was the Consulate's response to this.

"Good," he said, after a moment. "Bring us down to mach four, and hail the traffic controls. Request that they give us permission to come on-planet, and that we should be allowed to haul-in at Docking Station Alpha Gamera, at 0500 hours."

"Aye, Consulate."

At that, the bridge abruptly came alive with movement and snippets of low, controlled conversation as the crew busied themselves with carrying out his orders. Meanwhile, the consulate stood calmly amidst it all, watching as the ship approached the cloud-enshrouded planet of its destination.

After a moment or two, his shape gaze strayed to the other ships that surrounded his Tyrellian cruiser, following the same coordinates. It would be hours, perhaps, before _any_ of the ships in the line would be patched through to the traffic control center, and allowed to enter the planet's stratosphere.

His royal envoy's ship may have been the most important, even the largest ship that would wait in the line—but wait it would, he reflected grimly. The checkpoints weren't exactly the fastest, most efficient systems that existed. And this was ironic, considering that governmental procedures were supposed to be known for their order and proficient handlings of all interplanetary traffic.

He turned his head slightly in the direction of the chief helmsmen as the man made the connection to the control tower on-planet.

"This is the _Hyperion Ascendant_, class beta-zi-alpha, Tyrellian royal cruiser six-of-eight, requesting that we be given permission to land at Docking Station Alpha Gamera at 0500 hours."

There was a pause; then a businesslike voice responded from the other computer. "Your purpose?"

The helmsman glanced at Aidan for permission, which the consulate gave with a silent nod. He leaned forward again, and replied, "Official royal business of the royal house. We are on a mission from Chancellor Valdorian, escorting his son's bride."

"Your cargo?"

"Crew, passengers, and luggage."

_And since this is a princess that we're dealing with, there was a lot of it…_ thought the consulate, briefly passing his leather-gloved hand over his eyes and then the bridge of his nose: restraining the sudden urge to sigh wearily, and give in to a looming migraine at the memory. Loading all of the necessary cargo onto the cruiser had been _quite_ the complicated process.

"Your commander?"

A roll of the eyes would have been a humanly appropriate reaction to this rigid adherence to policy—but Aidan Lysander had built his current existence on the necessity of rules, and so he did react with irritation. As it was, however, it could take hours for them to simply gain permission to land at the rate that things were going now. Shoving abruptly away from the wall that he had been leaning against, he walked over to the communications console, and pressed in the intercom button.

"Control tower, this is Consulate Lysander of Tyrellia, acting on behalf of Chancellor Armad Valdorian. Our coordinates are being sent to you now. We carry no weapons outside of those installed for the necessary defense of this vessel, which you may scan freely, if you so desire. We cannot afford to be delayed in any manner at this time. We desire your cooperation."

There was a pause on the other end; then, "Very well, Consulate. Permission granted for the _Hyperion Ascendant_ to dock in landing station Alpha Gamera at 0500 hours. Proceed on your charted course."

Satisfied, Aidan returned to his command seat.

"Bring us down," he ordered the helmsman.

At the touch of the officer's hands on a few of the seeming hundreds of levers and blinking controls that littered his station, the enormous sleek silvery bulk of the _Hyperion Ascendant_ eased down to a lower velocity, beginning its approach to the planet with a kind of ponderous caution. Engines roared; turbines groaned as the power was gradually suctioned out of them, and the ship drew closer to the increasingly large, palely-glowing yellow-white orb that was the planet Caraesthir.

* * *

It was just as he remembered it. 

It had been quite some time since he had visited the planet that was the Mid-Rim's central hub; usually, his role as the chancellor's right-hand advisor and envoy kept him based on the planet of Tyrellia itself, or on any number of the planets that were near to it. Since he had gained his position at the illustrious and grandiose Tyrellian court, he had rarely left the Inner Rim.

_But that didn't dull the memories._

Caraesthir was a center for middle-class commerce and politics: a kind of lesser twin to Eärantharis, the capitol-planet of the Supreme Intergalactic Star Empire.

It was also the location of a little-known rotunda, where the commencement ceremonies of a very little-known academy had taken place for hundreds and hundreds of years. Almost no one knew this.

But Aidan Lysander did. He remembered the place all too well. Fortunately, however, his mission today would take him nowhere near that place. _Another stressful past-induced crisis averted,_ he thought, sourly.

_And now, onto another._

* * *

He leaned back against the chair—more to alleviate the tension of its metal against his shoulder blades than to actually _relax_—and watched through the crystalline plexiglass of the bridge's enormous view-port window as the _Hyperion Ascendant_ dove through the hazy, almost blinding white outer atmosphere of the planet. Within a seeming split second, the inner sphere of the planet revealed itself for all to see. 

It was a truly glorious sight.

The planet's sky was a-blaze with a kind of gold-white, early morning sunshine that caused everything to shimmer before his dazzled eyes. Veritable mountains of voluminous white clouds swirled in the air: brushing against the _Hyperion Ascendant_'s brushed silver hull as it sped through on its course to the docking station, cutting like the blade of a scimitar through silk.

Lower and lower the Tyrellian vessel dived, swooping around the blue-edged cloud—then, a low chime went off on the helmsman's chart, and he announced—"Docking Station Alpha Gamera in sight. Beginning our final descent."

"Power down the engines, and cut us back to mach three," Aidan said, his eyes focusing intently on the floating spire of the docking station, which had suddenly appeared—adrift in the sea of dawn-tinted clouds—some distance off.

"Aye, sir."

Aidan continued to watch as the docking station seemed to grow in size, the fine details of its exterior—the nautilus-like spiral of its main bulk, the countless numbers of durasteel plating, the seemingly tiny windows that caught the sunlight and gleamed like tiny suns—becoming clearer by the moment.

One part of his admittedly-trying journey was completed.

He had succeeded in processing all due protocol, and secured the princess. There would be one last stop—here, to Caraesthir, where they would re-fuel the ship and allow for mandatory inspections to be made—and then…

Then they would head to Tyrellia, where the Chancellor's son—the crown prince and sole heir, the pride and joy of that kingdom—would be given his trophy-bride.

Aidan shook his head.

_Absolutely disgusting._

But he had no time to think any further along this train of thought, for the crew had now assumed their stations for the final landing procedures, taking hold of myriad of sensitive controls. The _Hyperion Ascendant_ glided down and flew low over the air traffic into the docking port.

With a heavy sort of easing-down, the enormous ship came into the holding bay and locked in, its landing gear unfolding with casual deliberation. The _Hyperion Ascendant_ was a ponderous royal giant of a ship: a tangible symbol for the Tyrellian chancellorship's power and affluence. Tyrellians hurried for no one.

As he looked down from his command seat, Aidan could already see that a contingent of technicians and an accompanying handful of Caraesthirian security detail agents awaited the ship's arrival below, standing at edge of the docking port. He drummed his fingers, once, on the armrests of his chair.

It was all quite routine.

As the commanding officer of the vessel and sole representative for the chancellor, he would be the one to disembark from the ship first, followed by the other Tyrellian court envoys and officials, and the top-ranking officers of the ship's crew.

It would be _his_ responsibility to greet the Caraesthirian delegation that would no doubt be there to accost him. It would be _his_ prerogative to make the necessary explanations and exchange light jovialities, smiling at things he didn't appreciate and chuckling at jokes that he didn't find amusing—complimenting people that he didn't like, and mechanically repeating the tepid and politely neutral lines that had been drilled into him during his court-training.

Of course, the Caraesthirian port-magistrate _would _insist upon entertaining the Tyrellian consulate and his entourage, while their ship was inspected and refueled for the last leg of its return journey. This meant crowds of chattering, inquisitive people who would ask him thousands of questions and expect him to answer every one; this meant a delay in their schedule, for the sake of appearances, and _this_ meant a headache for him.

But—

Well, it _was_ protocol.

Aidan inhaled—taking one last, deep, cleansing breath—and stood. The bridge was silent as everyone waited for his cue: only when the consulate gave the word would anyone move a muscle. He squared his shoulders, setting his frame into its proper confident and proud stance; then he looked to the chamberlain who stood nearby.

"If all is in order, let us go."

* * *

It was twilight by the time that he was given word that the _Hyperion Ascendant_ had been refueled and cleared for departure. Deftly hiding the muscle that was working in his tightly clenched jaw—something that would have given away his irritation at the inconvenient and presumptuous delay that the Caraesthirian policies had caused him—Aidan dismissed the man who had delivered the message, and turned to the magistrate. 

_Bloody underworlds, five more minutes of this…_

He gritted his teeth, and put on a coolly neutral, polite expression.

"Magistrate, forgive me for interrupting…"

It was no wonder why Caraesthir had never grown to be anything more than a very minor reloading port of a planet, in the grand scheme of the Empire, if this man was a typical native. Magistrate Phyris was repulsively fat, gallingly obsequious, and a blasted nuisance—and that was a generous description, in Aidan's severely critical eyes.

But he dismissed the thought and prepared to continue his announcement, having noted that he had gained the bumbling official's pig-eyed attention.

"I have just been informed that my ship has been approved for travel, and that the inspections have been completed. You have our highest thanks for your hospitality, but we shall trouble you no longer. It is high time that we departed."

"It has been no trouble at all, Consulate!" the bumbling magistrate told him—in a voice that was too enthusiastic, too loud, and bound to gain everyone's attention, as was most likely the man's intention. "We are most honoured to have Chancellor Valdorian's delegation with us! But, here, I'll not keep you any longer; you've been delayed for long enough here, and your lord is surely watching for your arrival back to Tyrellia with a most expectant eye. I assume that the princess is well?"

Aidan balked a bit at that, though he didn't show it. Being a diplomat involved certain problems—one of which concerned knowing what to do when one was asked a question that one couldn't possibly answer with any certainty.

_Well…_

In all truthfulness, he didn't know whether the princess—the maiden ensconced on the Tyrellian royal cruiser, in the safe keeping of her escorts—was well or not. He hadn't seen her since the day he had arrived to her father's castle, and while he wasn't certain about the reason for that, he had an idea that he wasn't supposed to know. Or to ask. Anyone else inquiring after such a thing was unthinkable.

He scarcely kept himself from narrowing his eyes dangerously, substituting that preferred action with a more acceptable, light clearing of his throat.

"She…is very well, thank you, Magistrate. The Chancellor, Duchess Rafaela, and Crown Prince Theophilis are very much looking forward to her arrival, and the upcoming wedding festivities."

Phyris nodded sagely.

"Of course, of course," he chortled. "It is a most advantageous alliance, the treaty between the Baron von Rothbart and the house of Valdorian! The rest of the empire will surely be looking with interest to what future events will transpire from the union."

"Indeed."

And then Aidan bowed, with a curt yet fluid, sharp kind of ease.

"Thank you, once again, Magistrate. You have been very kind in accommodating us during our stay here."

He gestured silently to the second-ranking official in his delegation, making known his command for the departure of the Tyrellians.

Farewells were exchanged, conversations were ended, and belongings—cloaks, weapons, coats, and other such mundane items—were gathered up, handed to their owners at the door. Magistrate Phyris kept his place a little to Aidan's side all the while: blathering on and on about recent politics and social gossip, and after a few moments, his talking transformed into a dull mumbling noise in the back of the stern consulate's mind. Everyone moved towards the door.

"You will, of course, allow us to escort you to your ship?"

Aidan turned, putting on yet another politely indifferent smile.

"Of course, Magistrate."

* * *

The journey back to the docking bay was more like a tour of the floating, city-like space-port. The Magistrate's quarters were not close to the docking bay by any means, and the fact that the man seemed insistent on detaining the Tyrellians there for as long as possible was becoming more and more irritating to Aidan by the moment. As they paused beside a wall that seemed to be made entirely of crystalline plexiglass windows—which gave a gorgeous view of the sunset-lit clouds beyond, in the sky—Aidan scarcely restrained his urge to glance pointedly at the wrist-timer that he wore. 

Oh, the Chancellor would not be pleased with this.

And then things went from merely irritating to worse. Magistrate Phyris turned from his contemplation of the roiling cotton-like puffs of the clouds, and looked straight at Aidan, with a sort of incisive gleam in his glittering little pig-like eyes.

"Does the princess dislike travel, Consulate?"

That jolted Aidan from his disinterested thoughts. He didn't even have to look at the other man to know that the magistrate had set him under intense scrutiny—and he knew what the consequences would be if he gave the wrong answer to that maddeningly intrusive but seemingly blasé inquiry. A muscle worked in his jaw for a moment as he permitted himself a thunderous scowl at the floor.

Such inappropriate and prying questions were not acceptable.

Not in the slightest.

"Ah, well, she is…_unused_ to the arduousness of space-travel. She has never ventured this far away from her home before—the Baron von Rothbart, as you know, lives in a nearest corner of the Outer Rim, and it is not often that he or any of his kith and kin leave Rook's Cliff. The princess was indisposed to joining us tonight, for which she sends her most profound apologies."

He hoped that lie would hold.

Apparently, it did. Magistrate Phyris gave a sort of knowing look, as if he had just understood some great universal riddle, and his fat mouth formed a small O. "Ah," came from him, in a musing sort of tone. "Well—women will always insist upon being women, won't they! No matter, however, no matter at all; I am certain that we will be seeing much more of her after the _wedding_."

"Quite," was the consulate's only marginally strained reply.

Phyris shrugged, and the group moved on again, towards the enormous doorway that led out onto the docking bay.

There, beyond the slowly parting mechanical doors, the _Hyperion Ascendant_ waited the arrival of its passengers and commander, looking for the entire world like some sort of patiently looming quicksilver behemoth: its gigantic turbine engines filling the air with a low-resounding hum. Aidan—again—only gave half an ear, possibly less, to the magistrate as he dithered about shipping lines and the ingenuity of Chancellor Valdorian and the Baron von Rothbart, in the making of their realms' alliance through the marriage of the princess and the chancellor's son…

The sunset had transformed from a brilliant conflagration of unnaturally pure, fiery colours into a much deeper, ruddier palette; darkness had now stained the furthest corners of the clouded horizon, like black ink spreading across a crumpled parchment. There was no moon that night, and he could only see the very first, brightest star in the sky: glimmering like the last shard of hope in Pandora's Box. In keeping with his official requirements as Consulate, he moved through the now-open door first, Magistrate Phyris following close on his heels, still talking—

And then something odd happened.

Something _very_ odd.

He felt a bit of pressure in the middle of his chest, immediately over the spot where his rib-bones connected over his diaphragm. It was only a tiny bit of pressure—caused by an astonishingly thin and alarmingly bright, silvery blade.

* * *

Cast list:

Chancellor Armad Valdorian, of Tyrellia: Terrence Stamp

Magistrate Phyris, of Caraesthir: Richard Griffiths

_...And starring Christian Bale, as Consulate Aidan Lysander._


	3. Entirely Reprehensible Umbrage

_**Chapter Two:**_

_**Entirely Reprehensible Umbrage**_

* * *

A sword. 

Someone was pointing a sword at his chest, point-blanc, and at an angle that left no room for doubt in anyone's mind—it was meant to be a killing stroke, if just the right wrong move was made.

Aidan stopped short, feeling the tip of the sword press into the heavy black material of his thick uniform frock-coat; he recognized the intent of the blade's owner, and did not move. He knew enough about swords and fighting with swords to see danger when it was anywhere near him.

This most certainly felt like danger.

Weapons.

He had them nearby, and so did the delegation's guards, and the magistrate's guards—but he had the distinct impression that drawing weapons now would be a markedly bad maneuver. It would be far too easy—

But slowly—very slowly—when he noticed that his assailant had not yet moved, he raised his head, keeping his arms carefully loose at his sides in an amenable, non-aggressive position of near-submissiveness.

The first sight that he had of his assailant included a black-garbed torso and a black-gloved right hand that held the sword. It was a gorgeously-made sword, too: fashioned in the modes of the old days, with a roaring dragon of chiseled steel winding around the hilt, and onto the blade itself. Aidan had not seen a weapon of such caliber and make in quite some time.

_In fact…_

Then he heard a low, breathy bit of a chuckle.

Immediately, his eyes shot the rest of the way up to his antagonist's face, and he felt something inside of himself turn to ice when he had seen it. At that exact same instant, everyone else in the delegation stopped behind him, and various reactions went up from within the group.

All of this—from the sword's introduction to his coat-front to everyone's general realization of the danger before them—took place in a mere matter of seconds. Aidan vaguely heard the cries of horror and fear, the indignant protests and exclamations that were made by his compatriots.

But most of his attention was riveted on the person that held the sword.

"Consulate Lysander—a lullaby to your undertaking for the moment?" said a voice of low tenor: a voice that was both sinisterly velvet and sandy in tone, with the edge of a most cultured Inner Rim accent.

It was a man who stood before him, pointing that lethal weapon straight towards his heart—a man, or so Aidan guessed.

The form and voice were certainly human enough, though the man's entire figure was shrouded in a heavy onyx-hued, cloak-like robe that draped around him like the wings of a bat. His features were concealed by the face of a disturbingly realistic yet expressionless silver mask; within its almond-shaped eye holes, Aidan could see two glittering orbs of the purest hue of white-sapphire staring out at him, gleaming and mocking him in their menacing light.

He didn't blench.

"Who are you?" he ground out, trying very hard to keep the growl out of his voice. No matter who this man—this thing—was, Aidan could not afford to jeopardize the precarious balance of the situation.

The sinister figure in black stood between the Tyrellians and the _Hyperion Ascendant_, and Aidan had now seen the dim outlines of more dark figures, moving furtively on the docking bay behind the man.

He hadn't come alone, this antagonist. He had brought friends—there was a plan here, and Aidan was disconcerted by it.

_Who would dare? Why? **WHY**?_

Immediately after he had spoken those words—_who are you?_—the man had given his coldly light little chuckle again, and twisted the sword a bit: digging the tip of its blade marginally further into the front of Aidan's coat.

"I'll be asking the questions here, today, I think."

Aidan gritted his teeth together, and glared at him, thoughts whirling through his mind. No one had moved.

Stealthy movement that he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye alerted him to the reason behind this—there were other dark figures within the twilight shadows now, and they had surrounded the entire delegation. He could see the gleam of the dying sun upon much more than a paltry few sizeable firearms and blades.

Inwardly he winced, and cursed the mutual disarmament laws that the empire had imposed upon the planets that were at peace with one another. The rules of engagement were stridently enforced—_no shooting until fired upon_—

"Listen to me, whoever you are," he finally said, in a very controlled tone of voice. "I don't know why you've imposed yourself in our path, but _you_ ought to know one thing—regardless of your exalted plans for our fate, you are interfering with business of the empire. Our delegation is expected to depart from this space-station _now_. Keeping us here will only bring you a large amount of trouble."

"Well! Perhaps it just so happens that _trouble_ is _precisely_ what I came here looking for!" mused the man in black, and his blue eyes gleamed wickedly behind the blankly staring silver mask.

Aidan could not see the brightly self-exulting smile—but he could _feel_ it in the weight of the man's gaze. Inwardly, he seethed.

"You see? I _know_ of your mission, _Consulate_—"

—There was another twist of the sword against Aidan's chest, and this time, Aidan flinched, though barely perceptibly, as he felt the razor-sharp metal point begin to jab into his skin through the coat—

"And, please, for Fates' sake! Don't _flatter_ yourself by thinking that you are informing me of something that I don't know, when you say that I am impeding imperial matters-of-state! I am very well aware of all of that. The fact of the matter is, however…well, I just don't care about it a single bit."

He made a sudden, fluidly smooth swiping motion with his free hand—the hand that wasn't holding the sword—and Aidan coiled to react, expecting some strike against either himself or someone else within his group.

But no such thing occurred.

Then Aidan watched with growing disbelief and fury in his eyes, nearly choking him with roaring angry emotion, as the every single one of the Tyrellian _and_ the Caraesthirian guards dropped to the ground, with a clatter of weapons and thud of falling bodies. They were quite dead.

He whirled to glare at his opponent again.

"You killed my guards!"

Again, the man's cold, pale eyes smirked.

"It was their time to die," was his careless rejoinder. Before Aidan could respond, though, he continued, in a much more serious tone. "I have no desire for pause or preamble today, Consulate. I too have a very strict schedule to keep, and dallying here would prove to be…oh, _most_ unfortunate! For _all_ of us, I think."

He gave a shrug that was somehow both dismissive and elegant.

"My business lies with you, this evening."

There was a pause then, and the blue eyes regarded him with such a strange, gleaming light that Aidan wished he had never woken to face the day that morning. This was just too much. First he had been ordered to carrying out a mission that he had no desire to be a part of—then there had been the supercilious officials that he'd been forced to deal with that afternoon—and now he was facing this strange attacker—

_Who was a magic-wielder._

Only then—at that precise moment—did the world-rending and terrible truth finally dawn within the consulate's whirling mind, striking him with its shocking reality as anyone else might have struck him with a blow. This man, whoever he was…he was a wielder of magic. No one used magic in this galaxy. No one.

_No one_…

Yet he had killed the guards with some sort of unseen power. There was no other way to explain it. How else…?

"I was wondering, however…immediately previous to coming to meet you here…" continued the man as he stepped back a bit, removing the blade from its position at Aidan's chest so that he could cradle it within both his hands: running one nonchalant, black-gloved fingertip along its smooth, paper-thin edge.

Then he flicked his eyes up to meet Aidan's glaring gaze, and Aidan felt his skin prickle with irritation at the arrogant, mockery-filled expression within them.

"…Are you really as good a fighter as they say?"

_The gall! The unmitigated presumptuous—_

Aidan bit back a very ungentlemanly rejoinder to that, choosing to state instead—

"I cannot answer that myself, sir—the veracity of such an opinionated statement would depend entirely upon the informer."

He flexed his fingers.

_Slowly, slowly…don't let him see…_

"Those who would know gained their knowledge from my blade."

It all happened in a blur of motion.

Aidan's hand went to his side and vanished inside his coat pocket for a fleeting instant. Then it reappeared and his arm shot straight out in front of him, as he took aim with his sniper's blaster at the masked man.

But just as he swung his arm around, the man struck out with his own arm—which bore a thick black leather gauntlet that was lined with a row of sharply curved and wickedly sharp-looking spikes on its outside edge. Before Aidan could react, the man had slammed his arm against Aidan's hand, and the blaster-pistol's barrel was caught in the black iron spikes of the gauntlet.

With one swift jerk of the man's wrist, the weapon was deftly wrenched out of Aidan's grasp, and he found himself staring into his opponent's eyes, at much closer quarters. The man had lunged forward at the onset of Aidan's attack, and now he had a diabolically-curved dagger held perilously near to the consulate's throat.

The ice-blue eyes glittered with a dangerously calm insanity. "I didn't say that you could go, Consulate…" their owner said, in a singsong tone.

Then he stepped back, whipping the dagger's blade away from Aidan's throat. At one widely sweeping gesture of his cloaked arm, the entire mob of people moved back— all but scrambling to get themselves as far away from the unpredictable, masked, faceless, and nameless madman as they possibly could.

Aidan narrowed his eyes, resentful of the fact that his blaster was now lying a good seven paces out of his reach. He had other weapons concealed on his person—but what good would that do? If he tried the same trick again…

Who _knew_ what this lunatic would do?

_He_, however, was the Consulate of Tyrellia, the chancellor's right hand. _He_ was responsible for these people. _He_ was responsible for carrying out the chancellor's orders, and for maintaining order in the spheres of influence that he held as his own.

He couldn't possibly—

"I've met the pitiful souls whom you've used as pin-cushions, in response to their defying you," the man continued. "They speak…very highly of your skills."

Gasps resounded throughout the crowd.

Aidan felt himself go cold inside.

_**What**?_

But he squared his shoulders, and willed calm upon himself. Looking into the sharply chiseled, exaggerated features of the silver mask, he spoke.

"Let us pass. We have no quarrel with you."

The man laughed, coldly and derisively.

"I _do_ believe that you are entirely missing the point, Consulate Lysander! Of course you don't have a quarrel with me! For all you know, we've never met, or even so much as inhabited the same planet at the same time. For all you know, I could be the Patriarch himself, behind this mask."

A gesture of the gloved fingers to the silver face.

"_You'll_ never know. But _I_ know—I know that you haven't any reason to meet with me today. I, however…_I_ have reason to meet with _you_, sir. And you shall not pass until I have gained what I wish."

_So that is what it is!_

"What is it that you want?" Aidan spat, thoroughly disgusted at the implications of that last statement. This man wasn't just a magic-user—he was a pirate who used magic to get what he wanted from the unsuspecting world. "Is it ransom that you so desire? An imperial carte blanche, perhaps, to ensure that you and your activities remain unchecked? There isn't anything that you could possibly want on that ship—nor do we possess anything on our persons that you could use for your own gain. We are a diplomatic delegation, and—"

But the man was making a tsk-ing sound behind the mask.

" '_A diplomatic delegation_'? Consulate…"

Another tsk, and the cloaked head shook back and forth, the blue eyes taking on a disapproving glint. Aidan was all but squirming with impatience.

"That was a _stupid_ thing to say! If there was nothing that you wanted to protect on that ship, you wouldn't have stopped here, halfway in your trek across the galaxy! Stopping denotes that there is something that you wished to take care of on your ship, and my friends and I are—well, we are rather curious people. For my own part, I wanted to meet the great Tyrellian Consulate in person. Do not lie to me, sir. It won't work."

"Then what do you want?"

"A fight."

This was ridiculous.

He had already wasted a good, precious five minutes engaging in a pointless battle of the wits with this man—he had been jabbed in the chest with a very sharp sword, and had his neck pass entirely too close to the blade of a unnervingly well-concealed dagger—and now the man was demanding a fight of him. The day had started out bad. And now it had slipped down from bad to worse.

"Perhaps you will allow me to clarify myself, _outlaw_—"

Aidan ground the words out in a low growl—no longer wasting time on diplomacy or benevolence. He had ceased feeling magnanimous about two minutes into their undesirable conversation.

"My business here does not include battling with petty rogues and enchanters who claim that they alone have the right to deal death to whom they wish! Our business is for Tyrellia, and we _will_ be allowed to pass."

"Concerned because you don't have a weapon?" was the man's taunting, condescending response to that. "Here—I have a _spare_!"

Aidan barely had time to react, again.

The man's arm moved within the heavy cloak that he wore, and then, all at once, a broadsword came flying at Aidan: whistling as it traced a deadly path through the air. And then Aidan caught it deftly in one hand.

The man regarded him with a satisfied expression.

"Very good."

"No," was the firm reply that Aidan gave, as he came to stand in a warily defensive position: the sword gripped loosely between his two gloved hands. "I don't want to fight you."

The ice-blue eyes turned glacial and dark. "There are other men on that ship, Consulate Lysander…" the masked man reminded him, with a menacingly calm tone. "And you have a choice, here and now. Either prove yourself as a man, and fight me now—or stand by and _watch_ as I destroy your ship and every single living thing on it. Fight, or allow others to suffer."

He trailed off, and made a blasé gesture with one hand.

"…You're an honorable man, aren't you?"

Behind him, the _Hyperion Ascendant_'s second officer grabbed Aidan by the shoulder, and hissed in his ear, incensed—"Enough of this, Consulate! Do not listen to this—this _madman_! He can't possibly—"

The masked man's head swiveled with a kind of eerie slowness, and his eyes focused with a vague, twisted sort of amusement. "I can't _possibly_ do anything of the sort? Is _that_ what he was about to say?" Then he laughed heartily, as if some great joke had just been made.

Aidan shrugged the grip of the other man off, and gave a single, curt shake of his head. No, the glare in his narrowed eyes said. No.

_This is **my** battle._

"I scarcely see how my fighting you will end in any sort of satisfaction on either of our sides," he said, trying a different tactic: veiled distorted logical argument. If that was how the man preferred to make his own statements…then perhaps he would understand Aidan better if he used the same reasoning.

He spread his hands out to either side of himself, in an open-handed, innocuous motion of peacefulness.

"Whether it is you or me, _one_ of us will win, and will get what he most wants—and the other of us will be defeated, and will quite possibly die."

"Truly spoken, Consulate—but my reasons for challenging you are my own—and they will be revealed in due time," the man responded quietly. He averted his eyes from Aidan's…for the first time since he had made his appearance before them all. Then he looked back again, and the resolution in his gaze had returned.

"Fight me. Now."

Aidan felt as if his mind was about to snap.

"I—don't—want—to—fight—you!"

That set something off in the other man.

"I didn't ask what you _wanted_!" he snarled.

And then he lunged at Aidan.

* * *

The blade missed its intended target by a fraction of an inch as the consulate reeled back from the vicious, deadly-swift blow. But Aidan had endured many years of strenuous and complicated training—and he knew well how to engage in a man-to-man duel. Rearranging his grip on the hilt of the broadsword, he corrected his footing and swung his arm around, so that the blade of his sword connected with that of his opponent, when the man bore down on him again. 

It was as if the beginning of the duel—the first clang on the swords upon one another—had shattered the sort of spell that had fallen over the people that stood aghast behind Aidan. All at once, everyone began to scramble to get out of the way: shrieks of fear from the ladies and shouts of anger from the men, calls for more armed guards and other exclamations went up on the air.

But it was too late.

Consulate Lysander and the sinister masked figure had already begun their fight, and stopping them now was impossible. All everyone could do was simply attempt to get out of the way as fast as they could.

Which was a very wise thing to do.

Back and forth across the wide marble terrace that fronted the docking bay, Aidan parried and blocked each one of the man's blows—putting in a few well-aimed strikes himself, from time to time—while the man attacked him with the speed and brutal viciousness of a lunging cobra. He seemed to be everywhere at once! His movements were so swift that Aidan could scarcely keep track of where he was, and the increasing darkness of the twilight sky wasn't helping matters at all.

_Where is the light?_

Then the man was lunging forward, his sword driving immediately towards Aidan's throat, and Aidan was forced to reel back—straining to maintain his balance as he attempted to regain his footing.

Too late, again.

He stumbled back, only just able to keep his defensive grip on his sword, and then something smacked into the back of his legs—the first few steps on a stairway that led off the docking bay's main terrace. Aidan fell against the stairs, and simultaneously fended off yet another blow from his masked opponent. Bit by bit, he managed to fight himself to his feet again—and the battle continued up the stairway.

From the onset of the duel, Aidan had been deeply startled by the man's incredible prowess in the art of fighting.

There was scarcely five sword-wielding fighters left in that galaxy—if there were indeed even _that_ many. It was rare—no, more than rare—to find a being capable of handling a broadsword with any sort of skill.

And yet this man…it seemed as if he had been born with a sword in his hand! He was using every single martial arts technique that Aidan had ever learnt as a novice in the Tyrellian court…and _more_. Aidan had never heard of—much less seen—some of the moves that this man had deployed upon him.

Yet, in spite of this, his opponent was unable to bring Aidan down.

Their skills had set them into a stalemate.

Ah, but his opponent had made a most extraordinary mistake, for he had forced Aidan up onto the stairway, and now Aidan stood above him: braced half against the wall as he fought to maintain his balance. One wrong step and he would plummet from the unguarded edge to who knew what sort of deadly fate. His training held, however, and he quickly analyzed the situation.

Rearranging the position of his hands on the hilt of the sword, he changed his stance from defensive to attack mode. The masked man stood a few steps lower than him on the stairway, and his footing was precarious.

_It would be easy, if he could do it…_

Aidan righted his own footing, and then—after he barely evaded a vicious slice from his opponent towards his booted shin—he bore down with the flat of his blade, in a crushing blow.

With a growl-like grunt, the masked man fell back a step, fighting to recover the ground that he had lost after being forced to defend himself against Aidan's attack. Taking advantage of this, Aidan came down after him, and they neared the base of the stairway again.

Finally, alarms had started to go off around the docking station! If reinforcements arrived quickly enough, the whole mess would be over very soon—

Then everything went wrong.

_Again._

Both Aidan and his opponent had been distracted from one another by the wail of the space station's sirens and the flashing red lights of the alarms, but the masked man had recovered more quickly from the surprise of the loud noise, and without a moment's pause, he suddenly grabbed hold of the long frock-coat that Aidan wore—and pulled.

_Hard._

And then they were falling—falling—falling down through empty space. The side of the docking station's walls whizzed past them, and Aidan could hear the wind whistling in his ears with a terrible high-pitched howling.

_NO!_

Then—BAM!

Something immense and hard came up underneath them, without warning, and the impact of his gravity-bound body against its metallic surface caused the breath to rush swiftly out of Aidan's lungs. He didn't have time to lie where he was and recover himself, though—the man was already attacking him once more.

Aidan fended off a series of lightning-quick stabs and blows towards his chest and shoulders, putting in a few lunges and parries himself, and then he caught a more detailed glimpse of his surroundings.

_Fates!_

They had landed on the broad, sloping roof of an enormous transport-speeder—which continued to move, even as they fought on! The surface beneath his feet was made of some sort of incredibly shiny and sleek metal—and it was so slick that he could scarcely keep his footing, even with his traction-geared boots. The masked man dealt him a stunning blow to the stomach with a roundhouse kick, and Aidan stumbled back, wrapping one arm about himself. The air burned like fire in his lungs, and stars were bursting in his vision—he couldn't breathe!

With a snarl, he gave a retaliating blow, and the masked man was sent to one knee by a solid smack of Aidan's sword against his gauntleted arm.

Protected as the arm was, the force of Aidan's blow still carried a bone-crunching clout. Immediately the masked man raised his arm again, catching Aidan's sword within the curved spikes that lined the outer edge of his gauntlet. Aidan knew what was coming before the man had even moved—and so he was ready to react when the man's arm twisted, jerked, and then threw the sword off to one side. The weapon went spinning towards the edge of the speeder—

And they both dove after it.

It was Aidan who had the advantage this time. Falling with flawless acrobatic skill onto his hip, he slid across the roof's curve and used the momentum of his movement to catch up to the sword. Once he had snatched hold of its blade—taking caution to grab onto its tip and not hold it flat, where its sharp edges would slice past even his thick leather gloves—he lunged to the other side, and wrapped his fingers around one of the protruding ribs of the roof's structure.

But the other man did not try to stop his own downward plunge. Aidan felt a huge, falling weight collide with him, and saw the oncoming rush of heavy black material—yet nothing latched onto him. Shock stabbing into his mind, he snapped his head downwards, and watched as his dark opponent slid past him: coming to land, with a heavy clang, on the speeder's platform-deck.

Clinging for dear life to the side of the transport as it continued to hurdle along through the air at breakneck speed, Aidan only just saw what the man did next—and even then, he was filled with infuriation.

His eyes seeming to glow white-blue through the mask, the man raised his sword and saluted his opponent: giving a slow, mockingly-deferential nod of his hooded head.

Then he leapt off the transport—

And landed, with cat-like ease, on yet another portion of the space station's docking bay area.

An inarticulate, strangled exclamation found its way out of Aidan's mouth, and he looked up, then down again: scrutinizing his current situation within a split second. Alas, there seemed to be only one option for him now, and though it greatly displeased him…well, he couldn't exactly let things end as they were.

_Not **now**, at any rate._

And so he relinquished his hold on the transport's side, and made his own leap down onto the platform, following his shadowy opponent. When he landed, however, and looked around himself…

There was no one in sight.

* * *

"That…doesn't make sense." 

His voice—quiet as it was when he uttered those words—seemed as loud as cannon-shot in the immense silence that had suddenly wrapped around him, hanging like an almost tangible, heavy presence in the twilight air. Aidan felt tiny chills running up and down his spine, setting his nerves on edge; there was nothing around him, no one to be seen. But he somehow couldn't believe…

The masked man had demonstrated a keen focus and fiercely tenacious will during their battle. Aidan was a fighter himself, and he knew that such battles were not ended so abruptly. So quickly. So _easily_.

And yet the cloaked figured had disappeared.

What was there to be done now?

Surely, the villain had gone off to somewhere else on the space station, and was doubtlessly terrorizing someone else now, along with his mysteriously shadowy comrades. Aidan didn't even have to listen carefully to hear the sirens that were still going off all over the enormous floating structure—danger was yet about, and there were lawless, unscrupulous characters lurking about in the dark.

Quite obviously, Chief Consulate Aidan Lysander and the _Hyperion Ascendant_ were fated to have a difficult time leaving Caraesthir.

Now that he was no longer under attack, his senses returned to their normal functions, and he gave a cursory glance to both himself and his surroundings. The greatest damage that he had sustained during the duel was from his landing onto the transport-speeder: most likely a few bruises here and there, but those were injuries that weren't even worthy of note. He was standing along on the wide terrace, as the sun died in the horizon, causing the entire sky to burn with a blood-red luminescence.

He still had the sword in his hand.

Needless to say, his first impulse was to drop it, to fling it away from himself as if it had dealt him a violent electrical jolt—_because it belonged to a faceless coward of a pirate, of course!_—and return to his own party, with nary a glance behind himself. He hadn't allowed the villains to land upon the space station; he hadn't invited them to confront the Tyrellian delegation there. His responsibility lay in escorting the Princess Odette safely to her wedding. There was no more than he needed to do here.

And yet—

He turned around, sharply pivoting on one booted heel, and his hazel eyes narrowed: glinting darkly in the sunset's glow.

No. This was wrong, all wrong. He _had_ to do something; his loyalty to the Empire demanded that he take action, that he invoke his rights as Consulate and demand the capture, trial, and summary punishment for the nameless wraith-like figures who had dared to interfere with imperial matters.

It was his duty, and if he ignored the call of duty—

He rearranged his grip on the sword, and glanced around himself again. The masked man had vanished from sight, but something in the back of Aidan's mind told him that if the man's aim had been great enough to necessitate an attack on high-ranking visitors to a major imperial outpost…

The trouble was not yet at its end.

* * *

Across the terrace from him was a huge opening in the station's wall. Too large to be a mere door, it had to be some sort of loading bay—and the sharply astringent scent of molten metal and superheated combustion gases, coupled with the deeply reverberating crashing and thudding noises from within, revealed the place for what it was. His duel with the masked man had taken him several levels down on the space station, away from the more sophisticated and refined upper-class living quarters, to the industrial area. He was standing in front of the smelting plant. 

Well, there had to be at least _one_ person somewhere within the place that could direct him as to how he might find his way back to the upper levels.

So inside that door he would go.

Keeping a firm grip on the still-unsheathed sword—though he didn't realize it—he strode towards the gaping black mouth of the metal-smith's warehouse. Gusting blasts of hot, dry air hit him repeatedly as he stepped through the towering doorway, moving step by step into the shadows that were only relieved by the glow of the molten metal and the showers of sparks that went up in the air from time to time, as the gargantuan mechanical drills and blades did their work on the metal.

It was dark within.

Very dark. Almost too dark.

He took another step, and then he was entirely inside the doorway, surrounded and cloaked by the crushing shadows. The sweltering heat of the air prickled against his skin, arid and almost blistering, and—as he glanced around again—he noticed that he could see absolutely no living being within sight. There were no workers moving about within the darkness, no overseers or taskmasters tending to the enormous pulleys, levers, forges, and engines. There was nothing but fire, steam, and shadows.

Aidan's jaw clenched as he simultaneously shifted his grip on the sword that he held in his hand, and his eyes flashed in the dark.

Oh, this was just _too_ convenient.

The masked man had to have passed this way—there was no other escape route that he could have taken, from the terrace. He had to have come inside, to have stood on the very ground that Aidan's feet were now resting upon.

There was no other way.

Somewhere within the forge, there would be an exit to the upper levels: the place where the fiery underworld-like warehouse would connect to the more aesthetic portions of the space station. The masked man had expressed an interest in the _Hyperion Ascendant_—

_But that was before he insisted on challenging you to a duel,_ Aidan reminded himself, curtly, cursing his own oversight.

—Whatever case, however, Aidan found his entire mind seized by the sudden desperate determination to once again take control of matters and regain the day's order. He was responsible. He was the man-in-charge, not this faceless brigand. And if the _Hyperion Ascendant_, the princess, and the other Tyrellian delegates were in danger, it would be Aidan's duty to reach them and see them to safety.

That left no space for delay, no room for question.

Wherever the masked man had gone, Aidan would follow, for their interests seemed to lie in one and the same thing: winning over one another. The masked man had his aims; Aidan had his. And Aidan Lysander would see himself thrown into the deepest, darkest dungeon within the imperial palace before he let a filthy, unscrupulous, nameless _pirate_ manage to get the better of him.

A stairway lay directly before him, revealing itself suddenly as he rounded a bend in the iron-plated catwalk pathway that led through the forge. It wound up and up, in sharp and almost unnatural angles, to a distant doorway, through which he could see the faintest glimpse of light. He had found the way out.

Hastening his pace, he quickly reached the steps and sped up, taking two—sometimes three—steps at a time. His heartbeat began to match the steps that he took, thudding within his chest as he ran up and up and up, coming closer and closer to the waiting doorway and the light beyond it—

Then he was at the doorway—

And slamming himself to a halt—

So that he could turn his gaze down to the center of his chest again, where his ribcage came together, and glare stonily at the sword-point that had once more managed to jab him there, held steady by its owner's arrogantly confident hand.

Aidan heard a low, amused chuckle.

"Leaving so soon?" said his antagonist's voice: soft yet mocking. "We haven't finished our previous business, Consulate."

Aidan took his eyes from the sword-point, and slowly lifted his head, bringing his scornful hazel eyes to meet the icily derisive blue eyes of the other man.

"Leaving was the last thought on my mind," he confessed, lightly.

The masked man's eyes flared wide, and he made a sort of _ah!_-ing sound of comprehension—scarcely more than a hastily expelled breath—and he moved backwards with lightning speed, heavy black robes swirling and snapping: taking the two strides that were needed to move him out of the way of Aidan's sword, which Aidan had swung at him in a wide, slicing arc.

The blade missed the other man's black-cloaked shoulder—but he brought his own blade to bear then, forming an immediate one-handed strike to counter Aidan's blow. Yet again, Aidan saw the smile in his eyes. "Indeed; _very_ good!" was all that the masked antagonist said.

Then they were off again, fighting like two enraged sand-dragons.

Down the stairway they went, lunging and stabbing at one another with fierce and relentless abandon, neither seeming to care—anymore—whether or not they damaged and destroyed anything and everything that was in their path. Sparks flew as Aidan's sword crashed into the metallic railing of the stairway: sent there by his violent blow towards the masked man's shoulder.

But the black-robed villain evaded the strike, yet again, falling to one knee on the staircase with a grunt as he parried Aidan's blade with his own. The swords scraped savagely against one another as the two combatants pulled apart: both man attempting to read his opponent's posture and mind, to ascertain where the next attack would come from, and how it would be dealt.

Aidan knew that he was at a disadvantage, being on the higher step on this staircase. It was much too narrow for him to manage, and his trying to maintain his balance took up so much of his concentration that he couldn't properly guard his lower legs. Taking an enormous chance, he placed one hand on the iron railing—taking care to hold his sword in a protected grip—and vaulted over it, coming to land in a perfect crouch, one level below.

Looking up, he could just barely see the form of his antagonist silhouetted in the fiery air above. The masked man stood motionless on the parapet overhead, sword clenched in his left hand, his preternaturally pale eyes glaring murderously.

"So you've decided to play the game _that_ way, have you?"

Cringing at the imperious voice that called down to him, arrogance and mockery ringing in every syllable of every word, Aidan gritted his teeth and replied—

"This is no game! And I take no amusement from it!"

Blue eyes glinted behind the mask, and the black-cloaked shoulder gave a careless bit of a shrug, as the man responded—

"Pity."

Then he slashed at the air with his sword, and leapt over the railing himself, landing on the same lower walkway that Aidan stood upon, in precisely the same manner that Aidan himself had landed. The hooded head quirked to one side, and Aidan felt a smirking gaze fix itself upon him. With a disgusted glare of his own, he stepped backwards, once again assuming a defensive position.

Before they could cross swords, however, the man paused.

"I have to admit, Consulate—I'm both surprised and delighted to find a fighter of your particular caliber. No one knows how to use swords anymore, these days."

Aidan narrowed his eyes.

"Yes, well…" he ground out, through his tightly clenched teeth.

What kind of lunatic made casual conversation on the conventions of the present day and age whilst engaging in a mortal duel? This was purely, insanely _ridiculous_!

"I trained hard."

"Old-fashioned methods?"

_SLASH._

Aidan ducked to one side, and returned the strike.

"No. The chancellor insists that members of his personnel are well-versed in nothing but the best of martial techniques."

_SWOOP._

The masked man lunged aside to avoid Aidan's perfectly executed drop-kick, and brought his sword down to the iron grating of the catwalk beneath their feet, almost catching Aidan's lower calf with his sword blade.

"You are _lying_, Consulate."

The blue eyes smirked into Aidan's own.

"The old ways of the blade and the mind have been defunct and ignored for decades, and you know it as well as any man! You didn't learn any of this on your precious Tyrellia—every move you make is versed in the _ancient arts_!"

_No._

Aidan felt his blood run cold.

_No, that's impossible…no one could know…no one… _

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

Suddenly they had locked swords again, and were staring directly into one another's faces—and close as they were, Aidan could catch no identifying feature in the face behind the sinisterly gleaming silver mask that concealed his opponent's face. There was nothing alive and human about it, but for those eyes—

"One thing I'll ask of you at this moment, Consulate Lysander," hissed the man's voice, in a tone that was suddenly much lower, much more serious, and much deadlier. "One thing, and none other, now…"

And then the spiked gauntleted arm flew up from the man's side, and hit Aidan full in the chest, ramming its wickedly curving edges against his ribcage—angled so that they lay flat against his coat-front and would not stab, but rather bruise with force. Aidan stumbled backwards, and the man bore down on him.

Suddenly, Aidan felt himself loosing his balance, and only when he had landed hard on his side did he realize that he had been shoved off the stairway—which ended in an abrupt sort of drop-off into open space—and onto a flat, moving surface. The man jumped down after him.

"Lie to anyone else. But don't lie to _me_."

_KA-CHUNK!_

With fortunate lightning reflexes, Aidan scrambled backward—

Just in time to avoid the gargantuan, peculiarly angled _wall_ _of metal_ that slammed down onto the surface that he had fallen upon.

With a sharp screeching sound, the blade punctured through the sheet of metal that was rolling along the conveyor belt, while another of its kind performed the same action scant inches behind his head. Eyes flaring wide with both surprise and alarm, Aidan fought himself to his feet and then stared at the scene before himself: realizing with sudden clarity the danger that lay before him.

They were in a metal-smith's warehouse.

They were standing on a conveyor belt.

And above them, waiting to come down at precisely-timed, deadly intervals were a long line of giant guillotine-like blades, each sharp enough to slice through thick sheets of metal like a hot knife through butter.

Oh, this just wasn't _fair_.

The masked man looked up—as if he, too, was just realizing what kind of predicament it was that he had gotten them both into—and took note of the blades as they came down again, slid back up, came down again, slid back up, ad nauseum. Then he jerked his head back to look straight at Aidan, and the cool, challenging curve of the lips returned, along with the glitter in the eyes.

"Well, isn't that interesting…"

"Isn't it!" Aidan growled, as they simultaneously lunged towards one another—effortlessly avoiding the blades as they crashed downwards again.

The duel seemed to have transformed then, in the face of this new challenge: it was no longer a vicious, angry battle between the antagonist and the antagonized.

It was a contest.

Equally matched in skill as in size and experience, Aidan and the masked man fought on down the conveyor belt, dodging the slicing blades and stabbing at one another. Finally, the masked man bored of the challenge, and leapt from it—Aidan followed—

And they landed on the edge of a vat of molten steel.

Streams of the white-hot metal poured down from robotic dispensers above, sending deadly splashes spraying at the combatants, yet the two men continued to fight. Neither one was willing to give up; neither wanted to surrender, and, truth be told...the duel had now become a game, and they were both too engrossed in it to end.

Aidan avoided the masked man's booted foot—set in front of him with the obvious intent to trip him into the burning inferno of the vat—and aimed his own kick, forcing the man back a step or two. Sweat dripping from his straggling hair into his eyes, he quickly drew his arm across his forehead, and pressed forward with dogged determination. But then the masked man dealt him an unexpected blow.

One movement of the gloved fingertips—

And one of the insulation pipes on the wall nearby tore itself free, and launched itself towards Aidan at a violent speed.

Aidan whirled, bringing his blade around so that it hit the pipe as it went past, forcing its inertia to work against it, so that it slammed past him instead of colliding with him. Clearly annoyed by that, the man gave a growl, and then raised his hand, palm outward: snarling a harsh string of words in an ugly, guttural tongue.

Light—bright green shards of pure light—spouted from the black leather palm, and blasted into Aidan like a ton of plasma. He flew backward, sent to his hands and knees by the force of the blow, and was unable to recover for a moment. Then, he lifted his face again, and glared into the eyes of the other man.

"Do you plan on killing me? Or do you intend to simply play?"

"If you want what is best for you—and your crew—Consulate Lysander, I would suggest that you _stop_ asking questions, and continue _fighting_. My blade will not stop simply because yours does."

The masked man swung at Aidan's head, stalking forward again. Aidan didn't have time to get to his feet. He could only react.

_BAM!_

Power burst forth from Aidan's hand now—but it was blindingly blue, opposing the burst of green lightning that had emitted from the other man's fingertips—and the result was immediate and stunning.

The masked man obviously hadn't expected that particular sort of retaliation. Taken off-guard, he was blasted back as well now, and landed hard on the ground. Aidan scrambled to his feet, and wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his sword—

Too late for much of an advantage, however.

The masked man recovered from the blow that he had taken, and was on his feet again in a rush of heavy jet-black robes.

But his sword wasn't in his hand now.

They both spotted the fallen weapon at the same moment—it had landed on the very edge of yet another catwalk, some fifty feet below. Aidan anticipated the masked man's next move, and rushed forward just as he lunged to the side—

Over the railing they went, yet again, but this time Aidan crashed down onto a level that was slightly above the spot where his opponent's sword had gone. The masked man retrieved the weapon and glanced up, quickly. Aidan saw his pale lips curve into a diabolical little bit of a smirk. What was he going to do—?

"Get _down_ here."

The masked man's black-gloved hand shot up from his side, out in front of him—its fingers making a sort of grabbing movement—and a burst of that same green light sprang forth from his palm, illuminating the enormous dark chamber with a glow that was far more intense than even a powerful bolt of lightning.

Burning through the air, it ricocheted off the catwalk that Aidan stood upon, and the catwalk began to buck violently. It was as if the huge blast of power had given the metal walkway a life of its own, transforming it into a huge and volatile iron cat that twisted, arched, and jerked: its joints and supports groaning ominously. Aidan fell to the side, grabbing onto the railing just in time to keep himself from being thrown like a rag-doll into the air. The catwalk continued to lurch and writhe, with a sickening kind of erratic roughness, and his vision began to blur. More white-hot bursts of green power battered his precarious perch, and he knew that it wouldn't be long before he didn't have anything to hold onto anymore; the metal could only withstand so much strain—

"Stop it!"

"I don't think I will…" came the singsong voice of his opponent.

Aidan gritted his teeth, and risked a hasty glance over his shoulder, to the darkened space behind him: the place where the catwalk met the stairway that led down to the next level. But even as the thoughts were forming in his head, the masked man seemed to have read them. Immediately, there was a huge explosion of light, and the stairwell simply shattered, as if it was a pile of matchsticks that had been dealt a devastating blow by a gargantuan battering ram.

The catwalk ceased its roiling motion, and became utterly still. Aidan pulled himself to his feet, after a moment's hesitation, and stood motionless. There was hardly any sound in the air at all now, but for the eternal pounding of the blades on the sheet-cutting conveyor belt and the hissing of steam through the air. He dared to move his foot, inching it forward by the very tiniest degree—

And the catwalk gave an enormous groan—

The slatted grating beneath him jerked, and then tilted precariously to one side—

As the entire thing slid downwards by a heart-stopping foot and a half, and caught itself on the wall again with a bone-crunching crash. Then everything was still. Aidan scarcely dared to breathe for the next few seconds that ticked by, seeming slow as centuries. He could feel the masked man's eyes on him: watching, observing—gauging his reaction—and waiting, as if they were both uncertain of what would happen next.

Finally, the cold voice spoke again.

"I'd advise not trying to avoid me either."

Narrowing his eyes, Aidan bit back an acid retort, saying instead—

"I wouldn't dream of it."

A musing sound from the masked man, as he twirled his sword with a kind of expert dexterity in his left hand, contemplating it casually.

"Indeed. Shall we continue?"

"Must we?" Aidan snapped. "You've had your fight—you've seen what I can and what I can't do—and now I've had enough. Go your way."

The white-blue eyes flashed, catching a gleam of the ruby-red light from above, and Aidan gripped the hilt of his sword tighter, waiting for the next attack.

"I haven't gotten what I came here for yet, Consulate. And don't presume to think that a demonstration of your martial skills is all that I came to this place in search of—I might have said that, but I certainly didn't_ mean_ it."

In a split second, he had vaulted off the ground, and had leapt onto the catwalk behind Aidan, crouching there like a huge, human-sized panther.

"And now we shall end this."

They lunged towards one another at the same time, and the duel once more transformed; it was no longer a game. It was a duel to the death. Both opponents were furious at having been faced with each other's equal skill, and both were deadly intent on winning. No quarter would be given now—no witty banter could take place.

They fought at close quarters, swords swinging and feet scuffling as they moved in a lightning-fast, graceful blur of steps. The crash and clang of the sword-blades upon each other was rhythmic and dazzlingly-quick: the music for the perilous dance of their battle. Neither of the two men gave ground—at one moment, Aidan was forced back by a kick from the masked man, and in the next moment, the masked man would retreat in the face of a savage lunge from Aidan and his sword.

Then the masked man lost his patience.

_BAM!_

He flung his arm out to the side, smacking the hilt of his sword into one of the chains that were now the only things holding the catwalk aloft. The rusty metal links gave way, snapping instantly—and the catwalk lurched to the side again. The surface beneath their feet had a dangerous tilt now. Aidan kept his balance, and whipped his head around, staring at the masked man in sudden consternation.

"You're going to get us both killed!" he snapped.

A shrug of the black-cloaked shoulders.

"Only if we fall."

Aidan snarled and regained his footing, bearing down on the other man with a relentless fury. This had gone on long enough. Every move he made caused his ire to rise, inch by inch, until he was nearly blinded with rage and irritation. He was the Consulate, and no one defied him! This was an imperial outpost, and no one defied the Empire! Pirates were the scum of the galaxy, and this particular pirate was a pariah among cowards, who used magic to further his own demented and craven ends, and hid his face so that he could continue to pursue his black-hearted craft—

_BAM!_

The man lashed out once again, even as he was being driven back by Aidan's assault, and yet another chain snapped; the catwalk began to slid down—

"_NO_!" Aidan bellowed.

A red haze filled his vision, and he forgot all proper rules of martial conduct, pushed aside all caution, and simply rushed at the masked man, who was taken off-guard by his furious lunge and could not recover the ground that he had lost. Back, back, and back they went: closer and closer to the edge of the catwalk, where the stairway had hung, ere its demise. But Aidan was past the point of considering this.

_No more._

Then, at the very last moment, when Aidan made the mistake—in his haste to end the battle—of moving too fast and leaving his sword-wrist unguarded, the masked man struck out: slamming the sword out of Aidan's hand. The weapon went flying over the edge of the railing, swallowed instantly by the darkness.

But this helped not at all. Aidan wasn't going to cease fighting now, even when he was unarmed; the masked man was not going to see victory. With an incensed growl, he rushed forward a few last steps, overwhelming his opponent, and as the edge of the catwalk came up behind him, he pulled his arm back—and hit the man with all the force that he could, across the mask.

_CLANG!_

The mask went flying, too.

And Aidan froze in his tracks.

_No._

The man—whose face had been whipped to one side in reaction to Aidan's blow—stopped as well, eyes closed as he registered the fact that he had been exposed.

All was silent.

_No…it…it can't **be**…!_

Then Aidan found words again. His voice—when he spoke—was low, disbelieving, and very, very unsteady.

"…Lucius?"

Slowly—ever so slowly—the suddenly unmasked face turned, and the pale features that were half hidden by a haze of longish, unruly jet-black locks turned towards him. The head raised, and the white-blue eyes focused on his again. Their owner gave a little bit of a silent, breathy laugh: a rueful expression etching into his features, and the two men stared at one another.

Neither spoke.


	4. Discomfiting Agregations

_**Chapter Three:**_

_**Discomfiting Aggregations**_

* * *

****

Once he had returned to the upper levels of the space station, it took more than a little while for Aidan to round up all those unfortunate souls who had witnessed the duel between himself and the sinister black-cloaked man. And, of course, they were all quite shaken by the event, and curious about the whole affair, surrounding him on all sides and plying him with all sorts of anxious questions.

But Aidan Lysander _was_ a diplomat, through and through—and a powerful authority figure, besides that. Explaining away the situation and calming the fears of all was a work of fifteen minutes for him.

Farewells and well-wishing was exchanged between the Tyrellian delegation and their Caraesthirian hosts, then; the Tyrellians boarded the _Hyperion Ascendant_ and went about readying for their departure, and docking bay was cleared…and Aidan was left alone, once more.

But not _quite_ alone.

Sensing a very familiar, icy blue gaze fixing itself on the back of his head, Aidan clenched his jaw, flexing his gloved fingers; the black leather made a noticeable squeaking sound as he dug his fingertips into his palms.

He didn't turn around when he spoke.

"One hundred and fifteen years—nearly twelve decades, and gods-know-how-many days, hours, and seconds—is _that_ how long it's been? Do you even _remember_?"

There was nothing but silence behind him for a moment.

And then he heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like a very dry and almost caustic little chuckle. Aidan turned around, rather abruptly, reacting to his companion's apparent—and quite irrelevant, he thought—mirth with irritation.

The unmasked face of the man who looked back at him was indeed _quite_ human in its general composition—though there was _something_ about its pale, finely chiseled features that simply didn't seem quite _right. _And, as he had expected, there _was_ indeed some mirth in his companion's expression.

But it was a kind of warped mirth: abnormal, a twisted and broken contortion of true amusement, more chilling and haunted than smiling.

The blue eyes glittered, as their owner looked up from studying the shining metallic inside of the mask that he had worn as his disguise—which he now held cradled carefully within his two gauntleted hands as if it was a sacred relic or trophy of some sort.

He shook his head.

"I'd hoped that you would have forgotten that by now, and lost count of the time," was the wry answer that he gave.

In response, Aidan's lips twisted into a grim parody of a smile.

"You never _really_ forget anything..." he said, softly, almost more to himself than to the listening air or the other man.

Then his expression sobered a bit.

"I thought that I would never see you again," he said, without a further moment's policy or preamble.

The sinisterly perfect features of his cousin shifted into their cold little smirk again.

"Not many people _do_," Lucius Drake replied.

* * *

It had been a long time since Aidan Lysander and Lucius Drake—cousins through their fathers, Ragnar and Tristan, who had been brothers and were now long-deceased—had met, and they had parted on very much unpleasant terms.

And now, here they were: standing face to face on an intergalactic air station, on a planet of little imperial importance.

_What were the odds...?_

To say that they had both changed considerably since their last meeting would have been the most famous understatement of the millennium.

In the eyes of anyone who didn't know of their immortal bloodlines, one-hundred-thirty-two-year-old Aidan appeared to be halfway into his thirty-fifth year of life, and Lucius was a mere two years senior to him. Nevertheless, in age—and much more—they were no longer thoughtless young boys, fresh out of the academy. They were full-grown men, and battle-hardened…as their duel had so blatantly proved to both of them _and_ their witnesses. They weren't young anymore, by any means.

Neither were they innocent, inexperienced, or naïve.

Lucius certainly _wasn't_ very similar to the cousin that Aidan remembered as his comrade-in-crime, friend, and sometimes arch-nemesis.

When they had been growing up together, at the academy of magic and enchantment on Caraesthir, Lucius had remained thin and sallow, while Aidan had grown tall and muscular.

In those days of long before, Lucius Drake had been a slight figure with a mop of unruly jet black hair on his head, glaring blue-black eyes, and a perpetually pinched and sour expression on his rather gaunt face. He had always been slender as a rail, rather diminutive in stature, and prone to falling ill. He had been nothing short of absolutely brilliant, stunning every one of his professors and peers—though his attitudes, behavior, and study habits had been anything but exemplary.

The man who stood across from him now had a similar appearance to the cousin that Aidan remembered, but nothing more.

He was almost entirely different.

If they had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder, Aidan was certain that they would have been of identical height and build. It was in the fate of their family line, it seemed, for the men to be inherently tall and intimidating in stature. His father had been that way. Lucius' father had been that way. It was in the Drake bloodline. It felt indescribably odd to him, seeing his cousin's eyes at his own level. It hadn't been that way before.

Time, the avenger, had sprung its traps.

Underneath the heavy cloak that he wore, Lucius' garb was extravagant and old-fashioned: fashioned entirely out of jet-black velvet, with tall leather boots of the same shade. Quite obviously, his cousin had fared well, during their time apart.

_Which begs the question…_

* * *

"Where have you been?" Aidan bit off, frigidly.

Lucius raised one perfectly curved eyebrow, and regarded him with a coolly appraising air for a moment. Then, with a blasé gesture of his gloved hands—

"Everywhere. Nowhere."

Aidan snorted, only half-derisively.

"Only _you_ could get away with saying that so nonchalantly, and expect to have people accept such words as their answer, Lucius Drake. How _stupid_ of me to even think of asking you such a question."

But he didn't really feel anger towards his cousin.

_How odd._

Quite obviously, Lucius didn't feel like expounding on his life's expeditions since their last meeting, and—with events being such as they were—Aidan was content to let things remain that way. The past was painful, dark, and twisted. It was better to leave the skeletons in the Drake family's rather large closet to rest. He certainly had enough questions to ask Lucius; but he wouldn't voice them. It was simply easier this way.

Still, the matter of the attack remained…

"Then perhaps you will tell me why you're here? Why…"

And Aidan waved his hand at their surroundings: the waiting _Hyperion Ascendant_, the now-darkened Caraesthirian sky, and the space station where their duel had taken place. He couldn't find words to fit the _why_.

"Why this?"

Lucius didn't reply immediately; instead, he took a few steps off to the side, strolling casually towards the enormous bulk of the Tyrellian royal flagship.

A beat passed, as he gazed up at it with inscrutable blue eyes, and then passed a hand over its sleek metallic underbelly, with an almost appreciative carefulness. Aidan felt his skin begin to prickle with irritation again; he wasn't accustomed to being ignored.

Then Lucius glanced at him, over his shoulder.

"I…had some business in the area…and I heard that you would be stopping by, on highly-classified imperial business."

A shrug.

"It seemed workable."

Aidan gritted his teeth.

"Attacking me wasn't necessary."

Lucius' eyes gleamed, as he gave a wickedly mirthful grin.

"_Wasn'_t it?" he inquired.

And Aidan gave himself a mental kick in the gut for forgetting to recall his cousin's twisted sense of humor.

_Just like him, to say what you think he absolutely wouldn't, under any circumstances, say…_ he seethed inwardly. Taking care to keep himself from showing too much of a reaction to the other man's words, he clasped his hands behind his back in a formally diplomatic stance, and replied—

"Well. Any law-abiding citizen of the Supreme Intergalactic Star Empire would agree that the unprovoked boarding of a royal flagship, the murder of imperial security-officers, the attack on a royal delegate, and the wanton destruction of public property, in such a situation as this, is…oh, highly unmerited."

A pointed look of his hazel eyes.

"I suppose you already knew that, however."

"—And just don't care."

Lucius completed the second half of the conjecture for him. Aidan allowed himself a bit of a dry smirk at that. Oh yes; even after all the time that had passed, he still knew his cousin's mind.

They stared at one another for a moment, and then Lucius looked away again; he rapped the knuckles of his left hand against the ship.

"Impressive vessel, really," he said, amiably enough. "She can't be…what? Any more than three years old?"

Not amused by the purposefully satirical jab, Aidan glared at him.

"Six, actually."

"_Ah_."

Aidan narrowed his eyes.

The fact that the masked man had turned out to be his own previously-estranged cousin hadn't changed anything at all; his suspicions from earlier remained intact as ever. Lucius had confronted him for a reason—and Aidan was not about to be fooled into thinking that a family reunion of sorts was numbered among his intentions. He had already wasted enough time this day. The Chancellor would be displeased enough by the delay of their return.

He clenched his jaw, and replied through his teeth—

"She hasn't seen very much conflict. What are you doing here, Lucius? What do you want from us? You couldn't possibly—"

"Perhaps you ought to offer me a look on-board your ship," the sardonic, black-cloaked figure suddenly suggested. "I think you may find it most helpful."

Aidan bristled at that.

"_NO_, you are not going to set foot on board my ship!" he hissed furiously, lunging forward to snatch hold of the full-cut, black velvet sleeve of Lucius' outer robe as the other man moved to take a single, maddening step towards the lowered gang-plank of the ship. "The _Hyperion Ascendant_ is royal property of Tyrellia, and you, Lucius Drake—blood-relative of mine, as you might _claim_ to be—are a certifiable pirate and rogue magic-user, and you absolutely cannot be permitted to—"

"_Shh-shh-shh_!"

And then Lucius was rounding on him suddenly, holding up a gloved finger in caution. The gesture might have frightened a lesser being into submission—

As it was, Aidan crammed his protests back into his throat, and held his tongue, purely because he wasn't appreciative of being shushed by _anyone_, especially Lucius Drake. With deliberate obliviousness to Aidan's irritation, Lucius quirked his head to one side, pretending to listen carefully to the silent air around them.

When a few silent moments had passed, he spoke in a soft, almost singsong tone, eyes gleaming with a sharp malignant glee—

"No one else knows anything about that—about _me_, Consulate Lysander. And I'd like to try and keep it that way, at least for the moment. Do try to oblige me, for just once."

"Give me one _good_ reason…" Aidan growled.

"Do you _enjoy_ your position as Consulate to Chancellor Valdorian? Is life on that planet of yours—Tyrellia, was that the name I heard?—is it vastly intriguing?" Lucius inquired, with seeming offhanded flippancy.

But Aidan caught the subtext, and scowled thunderously.

If Lucius wasn't above making pointed jibes at his occupation, Aidan had certainly even less responsibility to demonstrate kindness in their current circumstances.

"Well, we can't _all _be wandering bards," he quipped back at his cousin, with perfect honeyed ease. This earned him an approving chuckle.

"Touché, my friend." Lucius said, lightly. "I shall concede to that."

He glanced off to one side then, turning his glacial eyes away from his severely-uniformed and glaring cousin to the spiraling towers of the Caraesthirian space port, which seemed to sparkle now in the darkness: lit from within their myriads of windows by thousands of coloured lights.

It was all part of one great testimony to the decadence of the Supreme Intergalactic Star Empire's current wealth and prosperity. In the estimation of some souls, it was a senseless and profligate waste; in the sharply-analytical and even more forwardly acquisitive eyes of a pirate, it was a glittering gem, dangling on a very thin ribbon above an abyss.

But the hand of Fate would come to take all of that away, sometime or another, with one swift tip of the galaxy's balance scales. It was imminent, as were all things.

He inched his head to the side, and eyed Aidan again.

"It's getting late…"

Aidan had also looked away—if only to glance out of the corner of his eye at some invisible nemesis, the embodiment of his current thoughts—and that was all it took. He heard Lucius' comment, and inhaled abruptly, opening his mouth to speak—then he realized that his slippery cousin was no longer within sight.

Lucius Drake had disappeared again.

A strangled exclamation emitted from his tightening vocal-cords.

"_Lucius_—"

And then he saw an ominous, bat-like shadow flickering in the yellow silhouette of the _Hyperion Ascendant_'s open boarding-hatch: the edge of a cloak billowing with the swift movement of its Machiavellian wearer. Lucius was now on board his ship.

Aidan felt his insides turn over.

Then he cursed.

"_No_! Get _back_ here—!"

Five hasty strides across the landing bay had him at the ship's boarding ramp, and then he was running aboard: his heart pounding as angry adrenaline chugged its way through his veins, his eyes darting back and forth in an infuriated search for his prey. He caught sight of the sinister shadow again and stalked after it, fuming.

_This was unacceptable! _

He rounded the bend in the hallway, and found himself standing at a junction in the ship's floor-plan. Two more corridors split off in opposite directions, angled at his left and right—and a stairway directly in front of him led upwards—

To the helm.

"Ohhh no," he said, shaking his head.

It wasn't that he couldn't believe that Lucius would do something so blatantly ill-advised as breezing straight onto the command bridge of a royal ship—he had been reckless when they were children, after all; why should he be different now that he was a full-grown pirate?—but he, himself, did not have a wish to be seeing this. Having the pirate who had killed imperial guardsmen and menaced countless others and endangered imperial business aboard the ship that he, as Consulate, was sworn to safeguard for its true master, the Chancellor…

He felt his migraine begin to reassert itself.

Wishing that he wasn't about to see what he knew he was going to see in another moment, Aidan wearily climbed the stairs, gripping the railing with a hand of iron. He didn't look up as he approached the doorway—he wouldn't look—perhaps if he just closed his eyes and told himself that none of this had ever happened, if he simply willed it all to go away, perhaps he wouldn't—

But, of course, no. If that was possible, life would be easy.

And if life was easy, then it would be easy.

_And that just wouldn't make sense. _

He founded Lucius standing nearby the primary controls, nearly blending into the shadows himself; the pale skin on his face was all that gave him away. He had placed the silver mask on the console at his side, and was brushing two gentle fingertips along the long column of buttons and switches: stroking them like a very sensitive cat.

"Coming from somewhere interesting? I hadn't thought you to be the tourist-type, cousin. I suppose I might be glad for you."

Aidan stood in the doorway, fists clenched.

"Get. _Out_," he bit off.

Lucius chuckled, and stood away from the console, picking up the mask. With a flash of his fingertips, it vanished into the draping folds of his cloak.

"Don't be so unsociable. I haven't done _anything_ yet."

The words were—again—spoken in a tone that was light and innocent enough, as if Lucius was truly honestly surprised that Aidan was so upset with him…but they held a razor-sharp undercurrent of warning.

Aidan ignored it.

"'Haven't done anything'?" he echoed, incredulously.

Then he scoffed, harshly.

"You've caused trouble—you are causing trouble _now_. Lucius, for the love of all that is good and holy, listen to me! I don't know where you've been or what you've been doing all this time, and much as I would _like_ to order you to tell me, I can't, and _won't_. And you cannot be here. If they find you—"

Lucius waved a hand, brushing off his next words.

"Haven't you noticed how conspicuously empty your ship seems to be, at the moment? You sent everyone who wasn't part of your crew away; they will not be returning under these circumstances. Your crew…"

He turned his head, and looked pointedly towards the door. Realizing his error, Aidan stiffened, listening to the suddenly horrific silence—

Gunshots echoed from deep within the ship. He snapped his head around, to gape in incredulous anger at his cousin.

"You unbelievable—!"

"Ah, _please_ don't finish that sentence."

His cousin raised one hand, his index finger pointed up in a silencing gesture. Then he smirked, condescendingly, and continued.

"_I_ am the very _least_ of your problems right at this very moment, Aidan Lysander—now, you might want to go see what your men are up to sub-level. These enclosed gunfights can be _so_ risky…"

Aidan sent him a murderous glare, then whirled and tore back down the stairway, breaking into a run as soon as his feet had touched the floor again. He didn't have to think about leaving his cousin behind, unguarded; Lucius would follow, he knew.

It was in his interests, it seemed.

* * *

Within half a minute, they'd reached the third sub-level deck of the ship, and only the use of his very fastest reflexes saved Aidan from having his face seared off by the white-hot barrage of laser-bolt fire that had erupted from both sides of the corridor that they now stood in. Aidan lurched backwards, recoiling from the sudden loud noise that the firing guns made—then he whipped his head around to glare at Lucius.

"Those were yours, I presume?" he snapped.

Lucius gave an elegantly nonchalant shrug.

"And yours, I should think," he replied. "My pirates don't generally fire their weapons at one another—unless they're going for target practice. Even then—"

Aidan had had enough of his prevaricating.

"Be _quiet_—_please_! Gods! You are going to give me an _aneurism_!"

"They have medication for that, you know."

_BAM!_

Aidan slammed his gloved fist into the wall that they stood against, and the tan-coloured plasteen surface made a noise that sounded ominously similar to a crack.

Then, without a second glance to his cousin, he stood straight again—squared his shoulders—and stepped out from the sheltering bend of the wall.

Lucius pushed away from the wall as well, and followed—as the very determined Consulate, scowling and thin-lipped with displeasure, strode recklessly out into _the precise middle_ of the battle between the Tyrellians and the invading pirates.

The Tyrellians instantly recognized the figure of their commander, and ceased fire, backing away from their opponents. The pirates—all eight of them that Aidan could see—glanced momentarily at him: the newcomer. Then they exchanged looks with one another, and shrugged.

Aidan glared at both groups.

"That is _enough_! Every single officer and crewmen belonging to the chancellorship is to return to his post immediately—and you _gentlemen_!"

He rounded on the pirates.

"—_You_ will kindly accompany your master off this ship immediately, and seek to interfere with our business no longer!"

A collective chuckle went up from the pirates, and, in the pause, Aidan realized that he really _didn't_ know why they had ceased their fire at all, in the first place. It wasn't because he had said or done anything to merit that—in truth, he should have been shot outright, upon walking out into the midst of such a fray—so then _why_—?

Then he looked more closely at the motley crew.

His skin started to prickle again.

…_He could see through them, if he looked very hard…_

"Only the magical and the undead can recognize magic, when it's set right in front of them," said Lucius' cool, uninflected voice, from behind him. Aidan didn't appreciate his cousin's seeming ease in reading his thoughts. "They won't fire on you because they know who you are. And because…"

A short, cold chuckle.

"Well, because I'm here—and they know I'd rather not have any more deaths added to our lists today. Gentlemen."

Aidan heard a swooping sound, which he could only presume was the noise of the sleeve of Lucius' robe moving as its wearer made a particularly expansive and sudden gesture with his arm.

"Kindly take yourselves elsewhere, and find trouble there."

That wasn't what Aidan wanted.

"Lucius—"

He turned around to face his cousin, who lifted an eyebrow and made a slight nodding gesture with his head, twitching his fingertips in a forward motion. As Aidan distrustfully turned to look—freezing momentarily when he saw that the pirates had vanished from sight, apparently having melted back into the darker recesses of the hallway—Lucius interrupted him, calmly.

"I solved your problem for you, cousin—proper etiquette would suggest that you thank me now, rather than continue to snipe at me."

He shrugged.

"But go your way…"

With a dismissive wave of one hand, Lucius stepped backwards, to lean against the wall again: arms folded with an urbane sort of reserve across his chest. His flippantly arrogant demeanor raised Aidan's hackles to a point that was almost unbearably irritating. After fixing his cousin with a look that would have withered the entire royal garden conservatory, Aidan rounded on the Tyrellians, who stood—mute and dumbly waiting—behind him, even after his first order and the pirates' mysterious disappearance.

"All of you, back to your stations _now_," he grated out.

Every last man quickly moved to obey.

"And I don't care what else occurs on this ship within the next fifteen minutes—whether it is a nova-bomb or furthering raiding from our _guests_—I want to see us on-schedule again, and en-route to home-base, _IS THAT CLEAR_!"

"Aye sir!"

Lucius put on a delicately impressed look—as if he was mildly amused by his cousin's authoritarian antics—then he turned on his heel and strode off, moving further down the corridor, much to Aidan's chagrin.

Aidan, of course, gave chase—

Yet again.

"Now _listen_ to me! If you don't get yourself _and_ your _friends_ off this vessel within the next thirty seconds, gods help you—"

Aidan rounded the corner of the corridor, still ranting at his seemingly heedless dark-garbed cousin—and then he stopped short.

Before his eyes was a terrible shock, an inexplicable mystery, and nightmare about to come true, all in one. Lucius stood before a closed door—the only door in the isolated hallway—and his startling eyes were fixed on it with a kind of intense, rapt interest. Recognizing the expression, Aidan decided that he still didn't like it when Lucius had that kind of look on his face.

It never led to any sort of good circumstances.

_Stop this before it's too late!_ a warning voice railed inside his head. He stepped forward, stretching out a futilely protesting hand.

"Lucius…"

Whether or not Lucius took notice of the enormous warning and barely restrained fear in his cousin's tone was not apparent.

The mage's eyes were focused solely on the door now—or, rather, not on the door, but what he could see floating about it. He made a circling motion with one hand, murmuring a few low words in the magical tongue, and looked satisfied when something invisible made itself known to his mind. Without looking back to Aidan, he commented, as if he thought Aidan didn't already know—

"This door is heavily magicked."

_Bloody underworlds._ _Blood, pain, destruction. Kill kill KILL._

Aidan didn't voice those thoughts of his own mind; he knew Lucius wouldn't take hearing them very kindly. Instead, he cleared his throat, and replied, blandly—

"_Yes_…"

Lucius took a half step back, folding one arm across his chest and propping the other's elbow on top of it, so that the gloved fingers of his free hand could curl about his chin: one fingertip tapping idly against his thin lips. His unearthly eyes narrowed in thought, as his eyebrows took a sharp downward curve over them.

Aidan began to feel even more uneasy—if that was at all possible—and jerked his eyes to the side, waiting for the inevitable moment when someone else from the Tyrellian crew would come along and catch him standing there, conversing with the ruthless pirate as if it was normal. As if it was all right.

And nothing was anywhere close to 'all right'.

He scowled.

Lucius removed his hand from its place at his chin, and passed it over the side of the door, once, in a smooth arcing stroke: a tiny, inscrutable smirk embedding itself into the corners of his mouth.

"Don't be witty, Aidan. It doesn't suit your officious outlook."

He paused.

"Now I wonder…what are you keeping in there…?"

_Oh NO._

Aidan lunged, putting himself in between the door and his alarmingly inquisitive cousin. Hazel eyes sparking with anger, he glared at the other man. Lucius looked marginally taken aback—and his eyes sparked with deep-seated amusement.

"Don't—you—_dare_." Aidan ground out, snarling through clenched teeth.

Lucius gave a breathy little chuckle.

"Oh, so it's _important_, then! I'd thought as much."

Aidan tried one last, desperate time to appeal to his cousin's better conscience.

"Lucius Drake," he started, in a very low, controlled tone. "Please. For once, please. Leave it alone. Turn around and walk away from this spot now, before it's too late. Raid, pillage, and plunder the rest of my ship if you absolutely _must_—but don't do _this_."

Lucius' expression turned slightly darker, and his eyes gleamed.

"Careful, cousin…" he said, in an equally conspiratorial tone. "You're in danger of looking as though you are hiding something from me."

"Protecting something, yes—I can't hide anything from _you_, if you already know very well that it's there," Aidan shot back, with great equanimity.

"…Very astute, cousin."

So saying, Lucius stood back, away from the door.

Then he whipped his head to one side. The dim report of a few scattered gunshots from the upper levels of the _Hyperion Ascendant_ reverberated through the walls: the Tyrellian crew and Lucius' pirates were, perhaps, finally bringing an end to their battle. Aidan listened too, for a moment—

_WHOOSH._

"Lucius, I said _NO_!"

Panicking, he threw himself forward—towards the now open doorway—in an attempt to snatch hold of his cousin before disaster befell them all. But Lucius was already standing beyond the doorway, and he quirked his head to one side, making a small waving gesture with his index finger: openly smirking at Aidan's dread.

_SHWOOP._

The door whizzed shut.

_KRR-CHUNK._

The locking mechanism slammed into place.

Aidan managed to stop himself just in time, watching the door close itself with a hissing of its hydraulic sockets—hearing it lock itself _from the inside_, he remained frozen where he was for precisely two seconds.

And then he attacked the door with his fist.

"Lucius! Get _OUT_! _NOW_! I swear, when I get to you—"

* * *

Meanwhile, a very calm and utterly unruffled Lucius Drake stood within the center of the very dark room, listening to the muffled protests and enraged threats that his cousin was snarling at him from beyond the magicked door. Letting his quick, satisfied grin to flash white in the darkness, he then turned to survey the chamber.

The door was indeed magicked—quite powerfully so, in fact—but only a severely advanced magic-user would be able to see or recognize _that_. The spell that had been placed upon the thick metal sheeting was intended to keep whatever was inside the room from getting out of it, not to keep whatever was outside from getting in.

Opening the door had been simple; a wave of his hand and an influx of his magic had seen to _that_. But now that he was in the place…he could see what it was that Consulate Aidan Lysander was so intent on protecting from the world.

It wasn't Aidan's magic on the door, though.

It was someone else's.

Lucius made a flickering gesture with one hand, and murmured—

"_Vhaeris, alendii amare_. _Nharim_."

All at once, light flooded into the room as the candles that rested in various candelabras and wall sconces burst into flame. Only slightly flinching at the abrupt deluge of warm amber light, Lucius then turned to let his eyes slowly rove around the silent chamber's entire circumference.

Oh, this _was_ interesting.

This was _very interesting_.

It was as if he had stumbled upon the very sumptuous, very feminine salon of an enormously wealthy and privileged lady. The bare walls and Spartan floors of the Tyrellian royal ship had been transformed by throw rugs, chaise lounges, vanity tables and armoires, trunks, dresser's mannequins, and other such finery.

Everywhere around him, he saw evidence of affluent living: golden candelabras, jewelry boxes spilling over with gems of all kinds, silks and velvets nearly bursting out of the places where they were stored. There were flowers and baubles everywhere—along with a substantial number of finely-made, leather-bound books.

Lucius strolled over to one of the low tables, and took one of the books in his hand, bringing it up to eye level so that he could see it clearly in the wavering candlelight. He raised an eyebrow, reacting with placid surprise to the gold-embossed writing that he read on its cover.

"_Death of a King_, by Sir Tomas Mallor? What absolute _drivel_…"

He made a small sound of disgust, and replaced the book on the table, rubbing his hand along the trailing sleeve of his outer robe as if he was concerned that the book's germs of indolent entertainment would infect his skin even through the gloves that he wore. Then, he glanced back towards the door, where he knew Aidan still lurked—his cousin's raging protests might have ceased, but the man himself had not departed.

"Well, Aidan…if this is your mistress's room…"

A pause, and a small chuckle.

"…I'm quite overwhelmed."

With another soft laugh, he sidestepped the low table, and crossed to the other side of the room. There lay the wide vanity table—flanked by two sizeable wardrobes—and glittering on top of it was enough jewels to make any petty pocket-thief's eyes pop out. Lucius trailed a gentle fingertip over the numerous sapphires, diamonds, pearls, and garnets, walking alongside the table and examining all he saw with his sharp eyes.

But he didn't take anything.

That wasn't what he was here for.

All in all, the room did nothing to answer his questions—if anything, it caused more questions to crowd into his mind. The door was magicked to prevent its occupants' escape, and there was a veritable fortune placed within its four walls.

_Who? Why?_

Then something happened—and that something forcibly slammed him to a halt, and very nearly caused his heart to cease beating.

He heard a soft, sighing breath. There was a rustling sound.

From behind him.

The ruthless outlaw-mage felt his breath freeze in his lungs, and a shudder of presentiment ran up his spine, causing him to stiffen where he was: shoulders hunching as though he expected to be attacked.

A beat passed, and then another, and another—

Then he whirled around, black velvet cloaked billowing and snapping around him like the enormous wings of an angry bat. His eyes widened, and his lips parted of their own accord.

And he gaped, quite unashamedly, at the beauty that lay before him.

* * *

_And introducing the newest addition to our cast list..._

_Lucius Drake: Johnny Depp_


	5. Unsettling Enthrallment

_**Chapter Four:**_

_**Unsettling Enthrallment**_

* * *

****

_I have traveled to the very furthest reaches of the galaxy—and beyond. I have seen horrors and wonders so immense that the mortal mind cannot grasp the gravity of them. I have done so many things. I have heard so many things. I have seen beauty before…but never like this…_

"_Never_ like this."

Even as those words fell from his lips in a murmur—even as every fiber of his being screamed out warnings, telling him to stop, to turn around and flee the temptation that waited before him—Lucius found himself taking a step forward, into the innermost room of the darkened chamber-set. His eyes fixed themselves on the blissfully slumbering figure of the beauty, as both fascination and curiosity swirled in his mind.

She was enchanted.

The room in which she slept was a bedchamber resplendent with creamy satins and airy draperies: the bowl-shaped bed upon which she lay was enshrouded by gauzy white curtains that trailed onto the cold metal floor. She was almost hidden within them—the radiant center bloom of a slowly unfurling rose, colour amidst the ashen sheets. Carefully, he moved into the room—never once making a sound to betray his presence—and came closer, suddenly seized by the inexplicable urge to see her.

He stood beside the bed, looking down upon her.

In all his countless years of traveling, he had seen many beautiful women—of many different kinds. Beauty itself scarcely surprised him anymore.

He had seen everything.

But he had not seen _this_.

With the silent grace of the shadows moving with the moonlight, he stretched out one hand: brushing aside the curtain with one infinitely gentle, infinitely careful fingertip. Once the glowing white haze had been swept aside, he could see her more easily.

She was young; quite young, he could tell. The imprint of time had not yet been made upon her pale cheek, and shadows of experience and maturity had not yet crept onto the flesh below her eyes.

Her complexion appeared nearly bloodless in the cold starlight that flowed in through the room's lone window; but her lips were full and dark, parted slightly as she breathed softly in her sleep. Long lashes graced her closed eyelids. She had fine, delicate features, and her body—what he could see of it—was petite and curvaceous: the perfect combination of daintiness and winsomeness. Her hair was of a darkest shade of auburn, and lay about her in long, endlessly spiraling ringlets.

She was enchanted.

He leaned in closer, running his eyes over her face.

The air around her still form fairly burst with magic: the sense of enchantment here, around her, was so intense that his senses burned with it. Someone had placed a spell upon this beautiful child, and now here she slept, completely unknowing of anything that was happening beyond the four walls of her sanctuary…

She slept.

Someone had made her sleep—he did not know why this was so—and could not guess. She was on this ship; his cousin was protecting her, for some reason, and the ship was here, on this planet, returning to its port of berth. What was she here for?

"Who are you, little one?"

He directed his question half to her—though he knew that she could not answer, not within her enchanted sleep—and half to himself, daring to run a gloved fingertip through the air over her face, tracing the curve of her jaw line. Sparks of magic crackled in the space between his hand and her cheek as he did so, and Lucius pulled back, suddenly, eyes flaring ever so slightly as he considered that occurrence.

_How very interesting…_

Perhaps Aidan could answer his questions.

If he was so inclined…

Lucius turned his gaze down upon the sleeping beauty again. She looked so very alone, and quite lost, even in her haven of white gauze and coverlets: the bud of a ravishing black rose, cut from her stem and left carelessly by the wayside.

_So alone…_

Lucius felt a strange tugging in the space where he imagined his heart must have been—if it was still there at all—and a peculiar look twisted his elegant features, so that he was almost, very faintly scowling and grimacing, all at once. _That is enough,_ he decided, and stood straight again: looming bat-like and imposing over the bed.

It was high time for him to go.

Then, on an unexplainable whim, he pressed two fingers to his lips—and placed them, briefly, upon the lips of the girl.

"Dream well, little one," he whispered.

He turned to go.

All at once, she sighed again—giving a tangible sign of her life for the first time since he had first become aware of her presence within the enchanted room—and moved.

Lucius whirled around, and stared.

Her eyes began to open.

…_They were bright sapphire, flecked with sparkling emerald…_

_He knew those eyes…_

* * *

Someone had disturbed the spell, brushing up against its walls and rankling it like a pebble dropping into the waters of a glassy pool. As the spell moved, she woke.

_Who was here…?_

A shadow spun away, in the corner of her mind, startling her.

Then Odette von Rothbart gasped, her eyes flying open, and she sat up, tangled within the sheets of her white bed. She stared into the darkness…

…But no one was there.

The spell reclaimed her, and she fell, unhappily and unwillingly, into an enchanted oblivion, once again.

* * *

_Bamph!_

With that loudly rushing noise and a burst of inky black smoke that smelled very much like incense, a towering black-cloaked figure materialized on the command deck of the _Hyperion Ascendant_. It remained where it was for a moment, head bowed and hands working in and out of tightly-clenched fists at its sides.

Aidan swiveled in the helmsman's chair, and turned a coolly sardonic smirk on his clearly nettled cousin.

"Find anything you liked?" he bit off: the words cutting as shards of ice.

Lucius seemed to shudder, deep within, at the question, and he did not look at Aidan for a moment. Instead, he took a single, distracted step to the side—going to look out the window nearby, white-blue eyes reflecting the cold starlight—and was completely, strangely motionless.

"Who…who is she?"

The dark mage's voice was a low and almost breathless murmur, as if he feared that his very words might shatter the delicate balance of the air. Aidan felt his own eyebrows etch into the beginnings of a perplexed frown.

Surely, Lucius knew…

Why was he asking about the girl?

He cleared his throat, and sat up, leaning forward so that his elbows were resting on his knees: his hands draping idly. Even his most scrutinizing glance towards his cousin could not tell him any more than that Lucius was severely disturbed…_by something_…

"She is a princess, from the von Rothbart House of Llyria. We've been charged with the task of seeing her safely to Corensar City...but that itself is more than _you_ need to know, Lucius."

Aidan leaned back in his chair again, moving his elbows to rest them on the arms of the seat. He pointedly raised one eyebrow, one corner of his mouth etching into a bit of an acerbic smirk.

"Are you satisfied?"

Once again, Lucius seemed to have chosen to disregard the scathing contempt in his cousin's words: his back was still turned on Aidan, and it was quite impossible to discern his thoughts or emotions from the set of his shoulders. A long beat passed, as he ran his fingers over the computer console that stood before him, tapping an erratic, syncopated rhythm onto the metal surface every so often.

Then he turned around, quite suddenly.

Aidan didn't react.

"Am I satisfied?" Lucius echoed, in a disturbingly detached tone of voice. His pale eyes were now gleaming with a light that would have greatly alarmed anyone else in its incomprehensible blankness. He was thinking of something...

_What was it?_

But, as quickly as the spark had shown itself in his eyes, it was gone: replaced by the flash of a bright smile that seemed only a trifle forced. Vaguely theatrical.

"Am I satisfied."

The second time, it was more of a statement than a question, though Aidan couldn't decide what kind of a statement it was.

"Oh, I should think so. If it rains tomorrow, I'll know for sure...and _then_

I shall tell you. But as for now...yes, I should definitely think so. I _am_ satisfied."

Aidan suddenly felt very, very tired. He shook his head, and put up one hand to massage his temples again, willing the dull ache within his cranium to kill itself.

"You are _insane_."

Lucius gave him a mildly sympathetic—but mostly maniacally amused—look, before quirking his head to one side and making a widely expansive, dramatically fluttering gesture with both his black-gloved hands.

"_Ever and ever, we blunder masterfully upon the arrayed beauty of the obvious: catching Serendipity unawares while Chance reproaches our great and impossible folly, and Fortune herself laughs unseen in the gloaming above us!_"

A glare was all he got for his poetry.

"We'll speak again, Consulate Lysander. Likely enough, it _will_ be soon."

"Is that a promise."

Silence met Aidan's sarcasm-laced words—and he started. His eyes shooting open, his hand leaving his face, he jerked back into awareness.

Lucius was nowhere to be seen.

"Lucius, not _again_!"

"_Until we next meet, cousin..._"

The words seemed to drift out of thin air, but Aidan knew better.

Racing out of the command bridge, he reached the exit ramp just in time to see an absolute leviathan of a ship materialize out of the dark night sky: engines roaring so loud that he felt his head would burst with the noise.

The giant shot over his head, blasting white-hot ion exhaust into the cooling air, and Aidan thought—for a single instant—that he had seen a dark figure, silhouetted by eerie pale blue light from within the ship itself, framed in one of its wide view port window, with its hand lifted in a gesture of farewell.

In spite of himself, he smiled, albeit grimly—

And nodded in acceptance.

"Until then, cousin."

Then he turned, and went to direct his crew in the journey back to Tyrellia. It seemed that he would be able to fulfill his mission after all.


	6. Interim

_**Interim:**_

_**Thoughts**_

* * *

****

Well, this was an interesting turn of events.

Lucius Drake was—if anything—fond of the paradoxical things in life. When the world expected him to be sane, he indulged in madness. When it dismissed him as a thoughtless raving lunatic, he displayed his most coldly calculating side. If he was told that one way was up, he simply smiled and said that it wasn't up at all; it was _down_. Irony was what he tended to value in living.

And this new conundrum was unquestionably ironic.

Though he didn't find it quite amusing.

When his ship's computers had intercepted a data stream from the small, rural planet of Llyria to the more urbanized Tyrellia—famed for its long-standing connection to the imperial royalty—he had been curious because a certain name had appeared on the list of Tyrellian principals.

Aidan Lysander.

He hadn't seen his cousin in years, although he'd been well aware of Aidan's doings since their exeunt from one another's lives. It had been no surprise to Lucius, that Aidan had followed his father—Tristan—into imperial service. The name-change wasn't a shock, either. The Drakes were too well known.

And their reputation was not a good one.

Still…it wasn't the fact that Aidan was involved with the Tyrellian-Llyrian negotiations that had intrigued Lucius' shrewd mind.

It was the fact that the Tyrellians and the Llyrians _were negotiating something_ that had interested him.

Llyria was a small planet, located at the fringe of the Outer Rim: almost within the boundaries of the Mid Rim, but not quite. It was a quiet world, run mostly by a handful of wealthy overlords who had grown prosperous in the planet's numerous sea-based industries. There were no governors, no royalty—though the lords themselves were literally wealthy enough to be considered as ranking levelly with the families of most kings and queens.

But Tyrellia had contacted Llyria.

Not the other way around.

Why?

* * *

Suddenly growing restless with the absolute silence in his personal quarters—the only place aboard the _Raven Star_ that was expressly off-limits to the wraith-pirates who made up his crew—Lucius rocketed to his feet in a swirl of thick black material. He didn't like being bombarded with questions for which he had no answer. And when Lucius didn't happen to like something, he made certain that that dislikeable something changed into a likeable something _very_ quickly.

Pulling at the enormous silver brooch that served as the clasp of his outermost robe—a weighty piece of work made entirely out of black velvet, which was a nice touch as far as villainous apparel went, but not much in the way of comfortableness—he unclasped it from his neck and shrugged it off his shoulders. The robe dropped heavily and rather unceremoniously to the floor, abandoned on the metal surface in a hapless pile. He would pick it up later. His old deportment teachers—all the sanctimonious old lady-professors from the Academy, so many years ago—would have shrieked with displeasure at such careless behavior from their former pupil.

But their voices were a blur to him now.

And the past was not something that he currently desired to recall.

Two quick strides had him across the room, at the large view-port window that was the chamber's crowning glory: a spiraling, spider-web-like network of iron frames and thick crystal glass that was so transparent, so spotless, that a casual observer might be tempted to think that there was no glass present. He had turned the lights in the room down so low that only the faintest, murkiest glow filled the air—most of the illumination on the floor came from the leviathan of a moon that the _Raven Star_ was passing by. The silvery light was sharp and cold, outlining everything with a razor-sharp quality.

Here, everything was black and white.

Lucius drew up his right arm, and rested it against the window frame, leaning his forehead against the crook of elbow as he stared listlessly out at the stars. To say he felt absolutely nothing at all, at that moment? That would have been a lie. He felt something. He felt everything. He just couldn't put a finger on what '_everything_' was.

_Bloody underworlds…_

He let out a deep, gusting sigh: feeling a pang of keen, almost childish displeasure and impatience strike through him. Things always went his way. He'd made certain of that for years now—for longer than he liked to remember, in fact. He made things work to the best of his interests always, because he could. That was what having power meant.

But he couldn't find the answers.

_The girl…_

Who was the girl?

* * *

Aidan had spoken truly when he'd told his cousin about her origins; Lucius knew him well enough to know when he was lying, and when he wasn't. He hadn't been lying that time. She was a princess—a Llyrian princess, at that—and she hailed from the House of von Rothbart.

Such a strange name. Surely, it had to be an old family that she belonged to. That surname fairly reeked of archaic bloodlines—

And magic.

The wheels in his mind began to turn more furiously than ever. He had heard that name—von Rothbart—before, though he couldn't remember when. It had been long ago, in a much different place. Memories, flashes of faces and deeply-etched bits of information began to flit by his mind's eye, as if waiting for him—daring him—to catch one for his own intense perusal.

He knew that name.

The girl had been enchanted. She was going to Corensar, the capital city of Tyrellia: the royal city…someone had put a spell on her, to prevent her from leaving her chambers on board the royal vessel…

Her face. Her form. The magic swirling about her.

_Fates._

He knew _her_.

"You've never seen her before in your life, you dolt…" he seethed, pushing himself away from the window with sharp and almost violent abruptness.

Across the immaculate metal tiles on the floor he paced: booted heels clicking angrily. Step, step, step—pivot, resume. Step, step, step—pivot, resume. Again and again and again. Step, step, step—

He had seen her before.

But perhaps it hadn't been _her_.

Perhaps someone else…yes, that was it. Perhaps…perhaps it was someone that he had known very well, years ago…someone who had been very dear to his heart…when he had had it…perhaps it was…

He remembered the lustrous, dark curls of her hair, fanning out around her recumbent form: brushing ever so lightly over her delicate shoulders and neck. He remembered the marble-like pallor of her skin, the cupid's bow of her lips; the feathery delicacy of her long black lashes as they lay closed, veiling her eyes from him. He remembered the scent of roses around her, as she lay trapped within her enchanted dream.

And then, before his mind's eye, her eyes suddenly flashed into being.

They were huge eyes: widened with both fear and wonder. If he had looked close enough, Lucius knew that he could have seen her every dream. He could have fallen into the pools of effervescent life that were her eyes. They were blue—more intense in shade than any sapphire, more vibrant than the summer sky after a storm. They were green—deeper and more luscious than the most verdant mountain woodland in spring. Amethyst, gold, jet, pearl—all were within her eyes. Life. Dreams. Fire. Wonder.

He closed his own eyes, and inhaled raggedly.

Oh yes, he knew her now.

Shaking his head, he put one hand out to the wall: steadying himself as a wave of emotion—which he had thought long-buried and long-forgotten—crashed over him. He could scarcely believe it; but there the truth was, immediately in front of him. He had stumbled across it in the midst of its sorcery-bound sleep. There it was.

"Allesandra…"

_His old friend's daughter…_

"Of course she is…"

Head snapping up, Lucius stared into the darkness of his captain's chambers with eyes that burned with a newly enthused, white-blue fire. A wicked smile curved his lips.

_What an interesting thought!_

And, quickly, he left his mind's lonely, convoluted meanderings to release his newest, most brilliant plot upon his unsuspecting pirate crew.

_Oh, this will be **fun**… _

* * *

_A/N: So, just a quick recap of events here, just in case we've lost some of you..._

_Aidan Lysander is the royal diplomat in charge of escorting the Princess Odette to her arranged marriage on the planet Tyrellia. Odette has been enchanted so that she's in a kind of drugged sleep during the journey. Lucius found out that Aidan--his cousin whom he hasn't spoken to in quite a long time because ofa previous falling-out between the two--was out and abroad, and decided to drop in and see what his cousin was up to. _

_Then Lucius found the room where Odette was, and got interested in her because she was so beautiful, because he felt like she was somehow familiar to him, and because she wasunder a powerful spell(in a galaxy where magic-users are considered rogues and outcasts). Unnerved by this, he goes off to think things through, and realizes that he does recognize her--she's the daughter of an old, old friend of his. _

_Now, where we go from here...is anybody's guess._

_(And please, if you'd be so kind, drop us a review, lovelies. We'd love it so much...)_


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